Tasmania police to probe Ronald Thomas pedophilia allegations

By Matthew Denholm
Australian
December 17, 2014

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/in-depth/tasmania-police-to-probe-ronald-thomas-pedophilia-allegations/story-fngburq5-1227160360156

Ronald Thomas at his house in NZ

TASMANIA Police is investigating allegations of pedophilia against a former teacher who was believed to be dead until found alive in New Zealand by The Australian.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse this morning advised that it would put the case of alleged pedophile teacher Ronald Thomas “to one side” in light of the police investigation.

“Tasmania Police intend to investigate the allegations against Mr Thomas and in order to avoid any risk of prejudicing that investigation this public hearing will not inquire any further into the allegations,” counsel assisting the commission, Angus Steward SC, said.

Earlier this monthThe Australian revealed Thomas, accused of abusing two students at Hobart’s Hutchins School, was living in rural NZ, and was not dead, as previously believed by the Royal Commission and his alleged victims.

As well as denying the allegations of abuse, Mr Thomas contradicted evidence given to the commission by former Tasmanian police commissioner Richard McCreadie that he (Mr Thomas) confessed in 1970 to molesting a boy.

Mr McCreadie gave evidence that in 1970 then Hutchins headmaster David Lawrence and Mr Thomas both made “confessional statements” but then fled the country before they could be arrested.

However, Mr Thomas told The Australian that while he believed Lawrence was “spirited away by the (Hutchins) old boys in the government”, he himself had remained at the school until the end of the 1970 school year, leaving to take up a long-planned post in Western Samoa.

“I made no statement; no confession statement,” Mr Thomas told The Australian. “There was never any question of an arrest.”