AUSTRALIA
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Chris Calcino 19th Feb 2014
FORMER Toowoomba primary school principal Terence Michael Hayes admitted he had three opportunities to report sexual abuse allegations levelled against convicted pedophile Gerard Vincent Byrnes in a letter to his superiors but failed to do so.
Mr Hayes told the Royal Commission into the Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Wednesday he knew the allegations child victim KH made were “extremely serious” but rejected claims he purposely and deliberately omitted them when drafting a letter to his superiors about the allegations.
He admitted the omissions were “grossly incompetent” but not deliberate, despite having access to the detailed notes which student protection officer Catherine Long had taken down during a meeting he called between the two, child victim KH and her parents in 2007.
However, he rejected claims from counsel assisting the commission Andrew Naylor that he purposely left out the most serious of KH’s allegations in the letter to his superiors in order to give Byrnes the benefit of the doubt.
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