Ronald Thomas, who now lives in Bulls, was accused at a royal commission of sexual abuse at a Hobart school in the 1960s.

NZ City
December 10, 2014

http://home.nzcity.co.nz/news/article.aspx?id=198436&cat=983&fm=newsmain%2Cnarts

A former teacher accused at an Australian royal commission of child abuse has spoken out from his New Zealand home, denying the allegations and that he fled Australia to avoid arrest.

Ronald Thomas, 77, was accused at the commission of abusing boys while a music teacher at Tasmania's Hutchins School in the late 1960s.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse heard evidence from a former police chief last month that Mr Thomas had admitted molesting a boy but fled the country to South Africa before he could be arrested.

It was thought he had since died.

However, Mr Thomas has now spoken to The Australian from his home in Bulls and says he made no confessional statement.

"One of those (police) men came back two or three weeks later and I...said, `It's my word against yours'," he told the newspaper.

"And he said `Yes OK,' so I said `Bye, bye'.

"There was never any question of an arrest."

Mr Thomas said he didn't flee to South Africa and instead took a teaching job in western Samoa.

Tasmania's retired police commissioner Richard McCreadie told the royal commission a boy aged about 16 reported in 1970 he was abused by Mr Thomas and the school headmaster, David Ralph Lawrence.

Mr Thomas also denied sworn evidence of abuse levelled by two former students.