Royal commission into child sex abuse...

By Janet Fife-Yeomans
Daily Telegraph
October 13, 2014

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/royal-commission-into-child-sex-abuse-pastor-said-it-would-be-normal-to-have-girls-sitting-on-knee-of-teacher/story-fni0cx12-1227088763310

Paedophile Sandilands was sentenced to more jail time this year for abusing children at a school in Frankston.

Counsel Assisting Simeon Beckett.

Commissioner Justice Jennifer Ann Coate.

Royal commission into child sex abuse: pastor said it would be ‘normal to have girls sitting on knee’ of teacher

A CHURCH pastor who investigated allegations of sexual assault by a teacher said that having young girls sitting on their knee in class “would be quite normal in a teaching situation”, the child sex abuse royal commission has been told.

Three girls who reported the abuse in 1987 at Melbourne’s Northside Christian College were given a “firm lecture.”

The teacher, Kenneth Sandilands, 69, went on to plead guilty and was jailed for two years in 2000 for 13 counts of indecent assaulting eight victims at the college, which is run by Encompass Church, a member of the Australian Christian Churches which was formerly known as the Assemblies of God.

Last month, Sandilands, who retired in 1992 because he was going blind, was sentenced to a further 26 months in jail for abusing children at St Paul’s Anglican Primary School in Frankston between 1970 and 1974.

The commission has been told that there will be evidence that over the 10 years that Mr Sandilands taught at Northside Christian College between 1983 and 1992, there were allegations that he had sexually abused about 30 children.

But one of the teachers, Margaret Furlong, who had reported three allegations to the principal, told the commission today that the teachers were “terrified and frightened” to say anything for fear of reprisal from the then-senior pastor Denis Smith.

Mr Smith is expected to give evidence later this week.

She said she had trusted the “Godly” men at the college but they let her and the victims down.

Ms Furlong, who retired from the school in 1998 but returned as a teacher in 2008, said she had been sexually abused as an eight-year-old by a neighbour who received only a suspended sentence and felt the legal system had let her down.

“I went in to working at Northside Christian College with no belief in the legal system to deal fairly with the victims of abuse,” Ms Furlong said.

“As a result of that belief, I put my trust in people that I thought would do the right thing, people that I classed as Godly men to do the right thing.

“However those men did not do the right think and they did not support myself and other staff members in dealing with these allegations.”

The commission has been told that there will be evidence another church pastor, Pastor Ingram, investigated claims in 1987 by three nine-year-old girls that Mr Sandlilands had six-year-old girls sitting on his lap in class, cuddled them and encouraged them to tell him that they loved him.

He had touched the young girls on their lower stomach and legs.

Pastor Smith agreed with Pastor Ingram’s decision that “abuse in front of a class was highly unlikely” and that having a six-year-old girl in his lap “would be quite normal in a teaching situation”, the commission was told.

The girls were reprimanded and Mr Sandilands given guidelines to follow including to stop having children sit on his knee.

The commission is investigating how the college and the Australian Christian Churches dealt with the sexual abuse allegations.

The hearing continues in Sydney.