The former student protection officer at a Queensland Catholic primary school still can't believe that 13 girls didn't have the courage to speak out about being sexually abused by their teacher.
Catherine Long, who is still a teacher at the school, gave evidence at a hearing of Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Brisbane on Monday.
Ms Long was present at a 2007 meeting between the school's principal Terence Hayes and a girl who had a complaint about being abused by teacher Gerard Byrnes.
She says although she was the school's student protection officer at the time, she did not report the complaint to police.
"No, I didn't think I was in charge of the situation," Ms Long told the enquiry.
"I was there as the note-taker. The principal was there. He was in charge, not me, and that's not passing the buck, that's where I thought we stood."
Byrnes was eventually arrested in 2008 before being jailed for 44 counts of child sex abuse in 2010.
Ms Long said that Byrnes regularly gave lollies to schoolgirls and they were seen "hanging off him" when he was on playground duty, but she didn't see his actions as grooming.
But Ms Long also said she still struggled to believe that her colleague could have abused so many girls with so many other adults around without anybody noticing.
"I don't get that our children, with all of the student protection and everything else we have, didn't have the courage to come forward," she told the inquiry.
"They didn't speak to us, the people they knew and trusted supposedly, they couldn't talk to their parents, and you heard their mums today, they still haven't spoken up.
"Why? What is it that's caused this, that's stopped these kids from speaking out? So I struggle with it."
The inquiry was adjourned until Tuesday morning.