Child abusers fled the country

Sky News
November 25, 2014

http://www.skynews.com.au/news/top-stories/2014/11/25/child-abusers-fled-the-country.html

A teacher and headmaster admitted to sexually abusing a student at a Hobart boys' school but both left Australia before they were to be arrested, a royal commission has heard.

Former Tasmania police commissioner Richard McCreadie was a sex crime detective in Hobart in 1970 when a boy aged about 16 came to his police station to make a report against staff at The Hutchins School.

During a later interview, then-principal David Ralph Lawrence and music teacher Ronald Thomas admitted they had molested him, Mr McCreadie said.

Both men gave confessional statements and were to be arrested at a later time.

But when officers returned to the school to arrest them, Lawrence had left for the United Kingdom and Thomas for South Africa.

'It was my view the government at that time would not have approved the costs of an extradition,' Mr McCreadie told the commission on Tuesday.

In his statement, the boy described being invited by Lawrence to the headmaster's office.

'He went to Lawrence's office and they had sex on a brown chaise lounge,' Mr McCreadie said of the boys statement.

When the then-detective went to Lawrence's office to interview him, he saw the piece of furniture and noted 'signs of sexual activity'.

Mr McCreadie said he gave no indication to the men of when they would be arrested.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is sitting for its fifth and final day in Hobart for its inquiry into how Hutchins and the Anglican church dealt with reports of abuse at the school.

The commission's already heard evidence from four former students who recalled abuse at the hand of teachers.

It's claimed up to eight staff members at the school in the 1960s had preyed on students.