AUSTRALIA
The Eastern Tribune

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 19TH, 2014

BRISBANE: A Former Catholic primary school principal was fired and charged, after he failed to report sex abuse complaints against a teacher to police as he did not want to compromise a bishop.

In Brisbane, at a hearing by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Terence Hayes gave evidence against teacher Gerard Byrnes. Hayes was the principal of a Toowoomba Catholic primary school where 13 young girls were sexually abused by their teacher Gerard Byrnes. Byrnes was then arrested and was later sentenced for 10 years for molesting and raping 13 girls at the school between the age of eight and 10.

Mr Hayes said he reported the complaints to his superiors at the Catholic Education Office (CEO) when the first complaints surfaced in 2007, but he did not inform the police or child protection officials.

When…