Royal commission to probe handling of reports of abuse by Gerard Vincent Byrnes at Toowoomba school

By Emily Bourke
ABC News
February 16, 2014

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-02-17/royal-commission-church-handling-abuse-reports-toowoomba-school/5261324

The royal commission is taking a closer look at how Catholic officials dealt with the complaints.

The child abuse royal commission will today turn its attention to how staff and Catholic Church officials at a Toowoomba primary school in south-east Queensland dealt with allegations of sexual offences against girls between 2007 and 2008.

In 2010, veteran teacher Gerard Vincent Byrnes pleaded guilty to child sex offences committed against 13 girls and was sentenced to 10 years' jail.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is taking a closer look at how the school dealt with the complaints.

Monique Scattini represented the families of five victims who took legal action and says the abuse could have been prevented.

"One of the parents went to the principal, reported allegations that his daughter had made to him," Ms Scattini said.

"There was subsequently a meeting with the principal and another teacher ... who conducted an interview with the young girl and her father.

"At the end of that meeting neither the principal nor the teacher reported the matter to police.

"The teacher wasn't suspended, he remained in the class for the last term, and then a whole new school year in 2008 where, sadly, he went on to abuse more of the young girls.

"And it was absolutely preventable if anyone in Catholic Education had have done their job.

"I know it could have been prevented because when the teacher was arrested, he admitted to the offences."

Mandatory reporting laws were put to the test, but the principal was found not guilty of failing to refer the allegation to police.

Ms Scattini says the response from the broader school community was also upsetting for the victims' families.

"Sadly the school didn't rally at all around the parents or the young girls who were the victims," she said.

"Instead all the support was thrown behind the principal.

"A number of staff and parents in the school community were wearing badges and ribbons in support for him as they would attend school grounds or in-court hearings for both the criminal prosecution of the paedophile and the principal.

"So they [the victims] felt incredibly ostracised."

'Procedures not followed to the letter'

Royal commission chief executive Janette Dines says this particular case is striking, given that procedures were in place to deal with reports of abuse.

"Given that we have just finished looking at what some people would call historical abuse with the Salvation Army, this is quite confronting for a lot of people who might have thought that abuse was in the past," Ms Dines said.

"What is also quite striking about this case is the fact is that the abuse against these girls, who were all aged eight to 10 at the time, occurred predominantly in the classroom in front of other children.

"And I think the other striking thing is the fact that this isn't a case where there weren't systems and procedures in place.

"There actually were systems and procedures in place and they had been accredited, but still there was something that prevented the strong application of those.

"And in this case, the abuse not just continued but escalated after the first complaints were made."

Ms Dines says it is likely other students at the school were aware of the abuse.

"There is a sense that the children as a group were aware of what was going on," she said.

"And whilst one of the girls had the courage to come forward, the sense of fear and powerlessness when it was obvious that she wasn't believed and nothing happened is a big feature of the impact that that's had on this group of children."

Francis Sullivan, from the Catholic Church's Truth Justice and Healing Council, says the school community are still coming to terms with the events.

"What happened in this particular case is so alien to what a church is about, people carry that with them for a very long time," Mr Sullivan said.

"When I visited Toowoomba recently and even went to the school and spoke to people in the staff room, it is quite clear that the experiences of 2007 and 2008 are still fresh.

"In the local community it's extremely potent and fresh and so it should be.

"This was such a travesty, and such a tragedy and the trust that a community should put in a Catholic Church school and certainly in the Catholic Church was really eroded and the scars of that remain."

Advocacy group initiates investigation of Family Court

Meanwhile, long-time advocate for child abuse victims, Hetty Johnston, is optimistic about the public hearing.

"They are getting to the crux of matters - they are taking no prisoners and the ramifications for this are not just going to affect Australia's children and organisations, the threads of this lead right around the globe," Ms Johnston said.

The royal commission's terms of reference are limited to looking at institutions and how they have responded to child sexual abuse.

Ms Johnston says the inquiry should be expanded as it does not look into abuse that occurs in the family.

The founder of Bravehearts has told the ABC that the children's advocacy group has received funding from a private benefactor to conduct its own investigation of the Family Court.

"The family law court has been left out of this entirely," Ms Johnston said.

"It's as though the shutters have come down, and they've said, 'well, you can look in the churches, and you can go anywhere else but don't you come looking in here'.

"Bravehearts are determined to go looking there, and we are going to go looking there.

"We are going to do this investigation. We have some private funding to make that happen."

Ms Johnston says the Family Court is an institution that cannot be ignored.

"We cannot let this opportunity go, where finally, as a nation, we are focusing on this most heinous of ways to offend against children, and not look at the modern-day issues that are facing our children," she said.

"They are not the homes anymore, or the institutions, the churches.

"It's now the legal process that causes so much damage to children and families who are already in a lot of trouble.

"We need to get that right, and unless they do that, we're going to be having this again in 15 years' time."