AUSTRALIA
The Guardian
Michael Safi
theguardian.com, Friday 10 October 2014
A six-year-old girl who complained she was being sexually abused by her teacher watched a Christian pastor make a phone call to inform her mother, only to discover later he was faking the call, a royal commission has heard.
Emma Fretton began giving evidence on Friday that she was physically and sexually abused for more than four years from the age of six while a student at Northside Christian College in Bundoora in Melbourne’s north-east.
Fretton told the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse that a teacher, Kenneth Sandilands, would type out lewd stories about her family on a portable typewriter and make her sign the pages.
“He would make me repeat the stories and agree they were true,” she said, adding that if she denied the stories or asked him to stop, he would beat her with a wooden paddle.
She was also touched inappropriately by the teacher, along with at least six other girls.
The commission heard that at least 63 students considered joining a civil action against Sandilands, who was jailed for two years for indecent assault in 2001.
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