AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times
[with audio]
November 12, 2015
Jorge Branco
Staff at a Brisbane private school were told former governor-general Peter Hollingworth had “washed his hands” of sexual abuse concerns and the school would be dealing with them “in-house”, a royal commission has heard.
The meeting took place one or two years after the death of Kevin John Lynch, who killed himself in January 1997 after being charged with sexually abusing a student at the Anglican St Paul’s School.
Dr Hollingworth was the Archbishop of the Anglican Diocese of Brisbane at the time.
On Thursday, former St Paul’s teacher Craig Patterson told the child abuse royal commission rumours surrounding Lynch’s abuse of students at the school grew from a “low rumble” to a “torrent” in the years after the counsellor’s death.
He said then-headmaster Gilbert Case addressed a full staff meeting about a year or two after Lynch’s death about how the school was dealing with the rumours.
“Mr Case… announced to the staff that number one because this was circulating, the whole thing about how the Archbishop, Hollingworth, was involved or not involved or what was going on,” he said.
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