AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
October 14, 2014
Rachel Browne
Social Affairs Reporter
Three student whistleblowers who reported their teacher for touching a younger girl in a sexual way were reprimanded by a senior staff member for the “dangers and implications” of their stories, a royal commission has heard.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was told three girls aged 11 and 12 raised concerns about teacher Kenneth Sandilands with Northside Christian College staff in 1987.
Sandilands, 69, was jailed in 2000 for sexual offences committed at Northside Christian College in the 1980s and was last month sentenced to a further 26 months in prison for sexual offences committed at another school in the 1970s.
Denis Smith, the then head of Northside Christian Centre, which ran the school, asked assistant pastor Keith Ingram to investigate the claims, despite him having no educational qualifications or teaching experience.
The commission heard that Mr Ingram found the “incident spoken of was largely embellished by the girls” and they were to be given a “firm lecture as to the dangers and implications of their stories”.
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