AUSTRALIA
Sky News
A school bus driver gained greater access to students because the level of trust grew between him and the principal, the royal commission into sex abuse has heard.
Former principal Claude Hamam said the driver, Brian Perkins, started volunteering around Adelaide’s St Ann’s Special School by helping out in the woodwork shed, doing repairs around the school and mowing the lawns.
‘At the time we had an element of trust that we had for all the staff there,’ he told the commission on Friday.
It is investigating the school and Perkins who sexually abused intellectually disabled children between 1986 and 1991.
Mr Hamam hired Perkins as a driver, telling the commission ‘he seemed to be suitable for the position’.
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