AUSTRALIA
ABC News
The Chief Executive Officer of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse Janette Dines joins Matt Wordsworth in the studio ahead of Brisbane hearings into a Toowoomba school.
Transcript
MATT WORDSWORTH: Next week the Royal Commission into child sexual abuse will hold public hearings in Brisbane the first outside New South Wales. But unlike the investigations so far it will concentrate on relatively recent allegations of abuse at a Catholic school in Toowoomba. The Commission’s Chief Executive Officer Janette Dines joined me from Sydney earlier.
(MATT WORDSWORTH SPEAKS WITH JANETTE DINES)
MATT WORDSWORTH: Janette Dines thanks for joining us. Why did you need to bring these hearings to Brisbane?
JANETTE DINES, ROYAL COMMISSION CEO: We’re a national Royal Commission and we’ve been operating for the past 12 months around the country in every State and Territory we’ve done private sessions. We’ve had calls from around the country. So the reason we’re in Brisbane is really to reflect that national focus and we’ll do public hearings across all States and Territories in Australia over the next couple of years.
MATT WORDSWORTH: What’s the background to the case that you’re investigating here?
JANETTE DINES: The case that we’re examining in this public hearing is the case of a Catholic primary school in Toowoomba and a male primary teacher sexually abused 13 young girls over a period of around 12 months.
MATT WORDSWORTH: And I understand the Principal was warned?
JANETTE DINES: That’s right. It appears that over a course of just a couple of days two separate communications were made to the school that Mr Byrnes was behaving inappropriately towards young girls and it was decided both by the Principal, in consultation with the Catholic Education Office, which is the governing body, it was decided not to report the matter further but to simply speak to the teacher.
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