AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
February 25, 2015
Peter FitzSimons
My alma mater, Knox Grammar School, is this week the subject of a Royal Commission hearing into an alleged paedophile ring. Knox?
While acknowledging that as a big boofy bumpkin, I was not necessarily the type to be targeted by predators, my first reaction was astonishment at the impression given from much of the coverage was that Knox was a hotbed of sexual interaction between teachers and students, while the rest of us turned a blind eye. That does not remotely describe my experience, or that of my three elder brothers. Between us, we were in the boarding house from 1960 to 1978, and in my time there, I was only aware of one inappropriate interaction between a teacher and a student.
It was a sunny Saturday afternoon on the basketball court in front of McNeil House circa 1975. A quiet Year 8 boarder told a hard-nut Year 10 boy, “Dicko,” that one of the boarding masters, Don Hancock, had asked him to sit on his lap in his room, and the lad had felt uncomfortable about it. Dicko told the MacNeil Housemaster, Mr Miller, who told the Principal, Dr Paterson.
When we woke up Sunday morning, Don Hancock – who once told a gag that if you put his first name into the middle of his second name, you came up with an inappropriate act – was gone, his room emptied, and he was never referred to again.
Tragically, that was in large measure the way it was done back then. Scandals were avoided and people moved on. The wider world has, for the most part, learned the tragic results of that method.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.