SYDNEY (AUSTRALIA)
Sydney Morning Herald
October 18, 2017
By Rachel Browne
[Note: See also the Royal Commission’s Report of Case Study No. 45.]
Two of the state’s most exclusive private schools failed adequately to investigate and address allegations of sexual abuse involving students, a royal commission has found.
Senior management of The King’s School in Parramatta did not report the alleged sexual assault of a student in 2013 to authorities, despite a police officer’s written advice to do so.
The inaction was described by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse as “a failure by the senior management of King’s”.
In its report into harmful sexual behaviour of children in schools, the royal commission also found senior management at Trinity Grammar School in Summer Hill did not adequately investigate allegations that students were being “raped” in the boarding house.
The report found that senior management, including headmaster Milton Cujes, were made aware of the allegations of sexual assault involving boarders in 2000.
School psychologist Kate Lumsdaine initiated her own inquiry because she was “concerned that senior staff would not investigate the allegations”, the report determined.
“We are satisfied that, if Ms Lumsdaine had not interviewed the boys and reported her conclusion, there would have been no investigation of the sexual assaults that were occurring in the boarding house at Trinity in 2000,” the commissioners wrote.
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