AUSTRALIA
Australian Teacher Magazine
BRISBANE, Feb 19 – A former principal admits he was grossly incompetent for failing to report a pedophile teacher he knew posed a risk to students.
Teacher Gerard Byrnes was arrested in November 2008 and charged for molesting and raping 13 schoolgirls, all during class time.
Principal Terence Hayes first heard a schoolgirl’s abuse complaint about Byrnes, including that he had “put his hand up their skirts”, in 2007.
But Hayes did not tell his superiors the full extent of the complaint, and he never reported it to police, he told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Brisbane on Wednesday.
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