Police step in as Tas abuse hearing ends

By Andrew Drummond
7 News
December 17, 2014

https://au.news.yahoo.com/a/25802931/tas-teacher-excluded-from-abuse-hearing/

An alleged child molester named during a royal commission and widely thought to be dead will be pursued by police.

Ronald Thomas was a music teacher at Hobart's exclusive Hutchins boys' school in the 1960s when students say he abused them.

Contrary to evidence given to the commission in November, Thomas is alive and living in New Zealand.

He has denied the abuse allegations.

But after speaking to the men who made complaints against Thomas, Tasmanian Police Assistant Commissioner Donna Adams on Thursday confirmed detectives are in NZ to interview the former teacher.

"The men have indicated they would like the matters looked into by police," she said in a statement.

So as not to cloud the police investigation, counsel assisting the royal commission Angus Stewart SC said the hearing would no longer consider any matters involving Thomas.

The now-77-year-old is one of several former Hutchins teachers - including then-headmaster David Ralph Lawrence - who allegedly abused boys at the school in a set of events which has become the focus of a royal commission hearing.

The commission heard in November from five former Hutchins students alleging abuse while at the school in the 1960s and on Thursday a fifth, 66-year-old Timothy Rowland, added his account.

Aged about 15 when raped twice in a fortnight by French teacher Lyndon Alfred Hickman, Mr Rowland said he was too scared to speak out.

When Mr Rowland's mother saw blood in his underwear at the time, he said he had been caned at school.

"I felt appalled and afraid. I thought that (if) anyone found out, people would think I was gay and I would be arrested," Mr Rowland told the hearing.

Homosexuality was illegal in Tasmania at that time.

"This is the reason I never told my parents or any of the other students at school."

However, Mr Rowland said he did report the abuse at the time, to a young teacher, Geoffrey Mervyn Ayling.

"I said to Mr Ayling that I had been sexually abused by Hickman ... Mr Ayling said `leave it to me' those were his exact words," Mr Rowland said.

He doesn't know if Mr Ayling acted on the report and left the school about six months later.

Also giving evidence on Thursday, Mr Ayling denied hearing such a report from the student.

He insisted that if he had been told of any abuse he would have done something about it.

And indeed in later years when he became aware of a culture of sexual abuse at the school, he tried to speak out and resigned when his complaints were ignored.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is looking at how Hutchins and the Anglican Diocese of Tasmania responded to reports of sexual assault at the school.

It has finished taking evidence and commissioner Andrew Murray will consider findings.

Hutchins has apologised to students who were abused.