AUSTRALIA
The Chronicle
Stuart Cumming | 12th Feb 2015
A ROYAL Commission has found Toowoomba Catholic primary school principal Terence Hayes failed to report serious child sex abuse allegations against one of his staff members to police.
Pedophile teacher Gerard Vincent Byrnes was in 2010 sentenced to 10 years imprisonment after pleading guilty to 44 child sexual abuse offences against 13 girls who were then aged between eight and 10 years.
Byrnes was the girls’ teacher at the time of the offences.
He was also one of the school’s two student protection contacts.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse investigated the response of Mr Hayes, his fellow school staff members and Toowoomba Catholic Education officers to allegations against Byrnes of child sexual abuse made by parents and students in 2007.
In findings published yesterday, it said the principal did not comply with procedures in the school’s student protection kit when he failed to report to police allegations made during a telephone conversation on September 3, 2007, and a meeting on September 6, 2007.
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