Silence condemned Qld girls to abuse

Daily Mail (UK)
June 30, 2014

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/aap/article-2674543/Silence-condemned-Qld-girls-abuse.html

Thirteen young Catholic girls were raped and molested by their teacher in Queensland because five adults stayed silent to protect the church.

That was the damning case presented to the royal commission into child sex abuse when it came to Brisbane to look at how a teacher was allowed to keep working at a Toowoomba school for more than a year after abuse claims surfaced against him.

The commission was told the school's principal, assistant principal, a student protection officer, and two Catholic education officers first learned of the abuse claims against Gerry Byrnes in September 2007.

But not one of them ever told police or parents.

It wasn't until Byrnes was arrested in November 2008 that the church began investigating his 37-year teaching career at seven schools.

During the hearing, the school's former principal Terry Hayes said the motto of the Toowoomba diocese at the time the abuse claims surfaced was "do not compromise the bishop".

But the former bishop of Toowoomba, Bill Morris, who said he only learned of the abuse after Byrnes was arrested, responded by saying it had stunned him that not one of the five reported the teacher.

Possibly the most stunning moment of the hearings came when the school's student protection officer Catherine Long said she couldn't believe the 13 victims didn't have the courage to speak out about the abuse.

She said she was present at a 2007 meeting involving the principal and a girl who said Byrnes had abused her, but she didn't report the complaint to police because she didn't believe she was in charge of the situation.

Byrnes was finally jailed for 10 years after pleading guilty to 44 child sex charges in 2010.