A former Tasmanian teacher at the centre of paedophile allegations has denied he fled the country to avoid arrest and says he never made any confession.

Ronald Thomas, 77, was accused at the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse of abusing boys while a teacher at the Tasmanian school Hutchins in the 1960s.

The royal commission heard evidence last month that 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.

But Thomas has now spoken to the Australian newspaper from his home in New Zealand 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 publication. “And he said ‘Yes OK,’ so I said ‘Bye, bye’. There was never any question of an arrest.”

Thomas said he did not 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 Thomas and the school’s headmaster, David Ralph Lawrence.

Comment is being sought from the commission.