Knox Grammar put up memorial for ‘predatory teacher’

By Ean Higgins
Australian
February 24, 2015

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/knox-grammar-put-up-memorial-for-predatory-teacher/story-e6frg6nf-1227236896377

A PEDOPHILE teacher sacked from Knox Grammar because the parents of a boy he abused were coming to the school was later given a glowing reference by the headmaster who dismissed him.

Damien Vance had been reprimanded by headmaster Ian Paterson for physically assaulting two boys before he was asked to leave the exclusive Sydney boys school in 1989.

When he left, Dr Paterson gave Vance a letter of service which he used to get a job in a school in Victoria.

He continued to teach until a court ordered him to stay away from all schools two decades later.

Today, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was told Vance was given 72 hours to resign by Dr Paterson, who did not mention the name of the boy he abused but just suggested he quit because “the parents were coming down”.

Vance said he understood they were the parents of ASD, a 14-year-old he abused in 1987.

In 1991, Vance asked Dr Paterson for a reference and received one that praised him as a strong teacher.

“He is highly experienced and he knows the art and craft of teaching, both in the classroom and the sports field,” the reference read.

That reference secured him a job offer at an exclusive Victorian school pending reference checks, but the job never eventuated. In 2009, he faced court for indecent dealings with ASD and was released on a good behaviour bond and ordered to stay away from schools.

Vance was one of five Knox teachers who in 2009 and 2010 faced court over abuse of boys at the top-ranked school.

Pedophile teachers at Knox Grammar were like “a kid in a candy a store” who faced no control or sanction from school authorities as they sexually assaulted students, the inquiry heard.

The inquiry also heard that the man who served as headmaster during most of three decades of abuse at the school, Ian Paterson, had, before he took the top job, his own “special group of boys”.

And, in other evidence, the commission was told that upon the death of one of the predatory teachers, Bruce Barrett, students were made to attend his funeral and a memorial to him was inscribed on the school gates reading “He Touched Us All.”

It also heard allegations some of the teachers held a sex party off campus, and paid a former student $1,000 for sex.

At the second day of the inquiry into Knox, a Sydney elite day boy and boarding school, heard more allegations that five teachers, later convicted for sexual abuse, and another who died, enjoyed impunity until 2009 when some former students came forward to police.

One former student, Matthew O’Neal, told the inquiry the school was aware by the early 1980s that one of the teachers, Barrie Stewart, was abusing students, but did nothing.

“It seems to me the school just sent them on holidays, or moved them around to get them out of the way, without actually dealing with the core issues or addressing any of the problems,” Mr O’Neal told the hearing in Sydney.

“These institutions don’t want to report to police because they are desperate to protect their image and their name,” he said.

“A gay pedophile in a boy’s school is like a kid in a candy shop. He should never have been there,” Mr O’Neal said.

On Monday the counsel assisting the inquiry, David Lloyd, said that in the period under question, 1970 to 2003, not one incident of sexual abuse at Knox was reported to police.

Another former student, Scott Ashton, told of extensive abuse, sometimes in open at the playground with other teachers present.

“Knox did absolutely nothing,” Mr Ashton told the inquiry, his statement read out by a friend, Gretel Pinniger, also known as the high profile Sydney dominatrix Madame Lash.

At Barratt’s funeral, Mr Ashton said, he was confused when tributes were paid to the teacher “despite him being a notorious molester.”

“There are memorial gates set up in memorial to him,” Mr Ashton said in his statement.

“They bear the inscription: ‘He Touched Us All’”

Mr Ashton said after leaving school early, he became a sex worker.

“I didn’t like sex work, but I was appreciated and valued,” Mr Ashton said in his statement.

“I had become habituated to providing sexual gratification to strange men as a lifestyle.”

Mr Ashton said he had, in 1986 after he left school, been invited to a sex party attended by several Knox teachers, and had sex with one of them, being paid $1000.

The counsel representing Knox, Geoffrey Watson SC, put to Mr Ashton he was making up some or all of the sex party, an assertion Mr Ashton rejected.

Another former student, Coryn Tambling, said he had been groomed by one of the teachers later convicted, Craig Treloar, who asked him for oral sex, which he resisted.

Mr Tambling said Treloar had told him: “When Dr Paterson was at this school before he was headmaster, I was in his special group of boys.”