AUSTRALIA
Australian Teacher Magazine
BRISBANE, Feb 19 – A Catholic principal believed a pedophile teacher was a risk to students but gave him the benefit of the doubt and didn’t report a serious child sex abuse complaint against him.
Terence Hayes has taken the stand for a second time at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Brisbane.
The primary school principal received a complaint from a schoolgirl in 2007 about inappropriate behaviour by teacher Gerard Byrnes, including the most serious allegation that he “had put his hands up our skirts”.
Hayes told superiors at the Catholic Education Office about the girl’s complaint on three separate occasions, including once in writing, but he never told them about the most serious allegation.
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