Abusive teacher never sacked: inquiry

By Annette Blackwell
Brisbane Times
October 13, 2014

http://news.brisbanetimes.com.au/breaking-news-national/abusive-teacher-never-sacked-inquiry-20141013-3hv5v.html

A primary school teacher given two severe warnings about inappropriate touching of children continued to teach for another six years at the same Pentecostal school, an inquiry has heard.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is examining how a Pentecostal church and its school handled complaints against Kenneth Sandilands, who taught there from 1983 to 1992.

Sandilands was jailed in 2000 for two years for offences against eight boys and girls at Northside Christian College at Bundoora in the northern suburbs of Melbourne.

In September 2014 he was sent back to jail for 26 months on a further six counts of indecent assault at St Paul's Anglican primary School in Frankston, Victoria, where he had worked in the 1970s.

Denis Smith, senior pastor at the Northside Christian Life Centre church which ran the school, said on Monday the then-principal Ken Ellery investigated allegations against Sandilands in December 1986.

He reported there was "no case to answer" against him but warned Sandilands to stop hugging children.

Three months later, Mr Ellery's successor as principal, Neil Rookes, told Pastor Smith that Sandilands had been "specifically warned not to touch the children" and given a set of guidelines.

Mr Rookes, who is now dead, also told the pastor if there was another incident Sandilands should be fired.

Pastor Smith said at that stage he was not construing "anything of a sexual nature" in Sandilands conduct.

"I was being guided by the educators ... the principals - that they would know what was right and wrong".

The commission has heard that from 1983 to 1989 Sandilands allegedly abused 26 children at the school and in August 1991 there were more allegations.

Complaints included claims he touched the genitals of both boys and girls, used a wooden paddle on their bare bottoms and showed some children drawings of genitalia and discussed sexual acts.

Simon Murray, who joined the school as deputy principal in 1991, said he was given no detail of allegations against Sandilands except that he was working under guidelines not to touch the children.

Mr Murray sobbed in the witness box and said "over the past two or three weeks I have been deeply impacted as I have learnt for the first time of how some of the children at a school (where) I taught suffered."

Sandilands was monitored in his classroom by a teacher's aide but this was because of his failing eyesight.

Kenneth Sandilands went on sick leave in 1992 and retired in 1997, the commission was told.

Earlier, a teacher at the school, Margaret Furlong, said she reported three incidents of abuse to the headmaster but nothing was done.

Ms Furlong revealed she had been abused as a child and her abuser was given a suspended sentence and allowed to live two doors from her home.

She had no faith in the legal system, she said.

"As a result I put my trust in people that I thought would do the right thing - people I classed as Godly men to do the right thing," she told the hearing.

She also said there was a culture of bullying at the school and she was "fearful" of Pastor Smith.