AUSTRALIA
Australian Teacher Magazine
BRISBANE, Feb 20 – On the fourth floor of Brisbane Magistrates Court, a former primary school principal is close to tears and trembling.
Terence Hayes was in charge at a regional Queensland Catholic school when pedophile teacher Gerard Vincent Byrnes sexually assaulted or raped 13 girls, aged nine and 10.
This wasn’t some horror story from half a century ago when child abuse was a taboo topic of discussion.
This was a classroom atrocity that happened less than a decade ago.
Hayes, who no longer works as a school principal, is being grilled before a packed courtroom as part of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
It’s late on Wednesday afternoon and Hayes’ eyes well up, after spending the better part of two days in the witness box being defensive and offering a series of one-word answers.
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