AUSTRALIA
Daily Mail (UK)
‘I didn’t know paedophilia was a crime’: What church leader and former deputy school principal told hearing into child sex abuse despite being warned about predatory teacher
By FREYA NOBLE
The former superior of a NSW Marist Brothers community and deputy principal of a school for 600 students has told an inquiry he did not associate child sexual abuse with crime in the 1980s.
Brother Anthony Hunt was head of the Lismore Marist community to which Gregory Sutton – who was later jailed for sexually assaulting 15 children – was attached from 1985 to 1987.
Brother Hunt was also deputy principal of the Marist Trinity College in Lismore which had 600 students at the time.
On Tuesday he gave evidence at the royal commission into child sexual abuse that although concerns were raised with him about the behaviour of Sutton at St Carthage’s primary school, he left it to the school to deal with it.
Towards the end of two-and-a-half hours of evidence he said he considered complaints of inappropriate behaviour by Sutton as ‘excessive expressions of affection’ and had not heard the word pedophile at the time.
‘When you give that answer, that as the deputy principal of that Catholic college in the mid-to-late 80s in this nation, you did not understand that the sexual assault of children was a crime?’ Presiding Commissioner Justice Jennifer Coate asked.
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