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Royal Commission into Knox Grammar sexual abuse: Peter FitzSimons retells a scandal
By Peter Fitzsimons
My alma mater, Knox Grammar School, is this week the subject of a Royal Commission hearing into an alleged paedophile ring. Knox? While acknowledging that as a big boofy bumpkin, I was not necessarily the type to be targeted by predators, my first reaction was astonishment at the impression given from much of the coverage was that Knox was a hotbed of sexual interaction between teachers and students, while the rest of us turned a blind eye. That does not remotely describe my experience, or that of my three elder brothers. Between us, we were in the boarding house from 1960 to 1978, and in my time there, I was only aware of one inappropriate interaction between a teacher and a student. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon on the basketball court in front of McNeil House circa 1975. A quiet Year 8 boarder told a hard-nut Year 10 boy, "Dicko," that one of the boarding masters, Don Hancock, had asked him to sit on his lap in his room, and the lad had felt uncomfortable about it. Dicko told the MacNeil Housemaster, Mr Miller, who told the Principal, Dr Paterson. When we woke up Sunday morning, Don Hancock – who once told a gag that if you put his first name into the middle of his second name, you came up with an inappropriate act – was gone, his room emptied, and he was never referred to again. Tragically, that was in large measure the way it was done back then. Scandals were avoided and people moved on. The wider world has, for the most part, learned the tragic results of that method. In this case, a call to the police might have seemed problematic – the lad had felt uncomfortable, before any interaction had taken place – but that housemaster went on to do enormous damage. In 2006, Don Hancock took his life in Indonesia after, the Herald reported, being "suspected to have been part of a paedophile ring linked to a language school established and supervised by the Australian Government". As to Adrian John Nisbett and Roger James – two of the names to emerge often in the Royal Commission – I knew them well. Mr Nisbett was an accomplished English teacher and boarding house master who lived for the school; Mr James was big in cadets, and lived on cigars and alcohol. There was speculation as to Mr Nisbett's sexuality, but there was never any word that he was a danger to us. Mr James was just immensely popular. There were openly gay masters. One of the latter, a teacher with a bent for drama, was hugely popular, a terrific man, and I ran into him just a few months ago. He's appalled as everyone else and gobsmacked at what has emerged. What happened then, in the 1980s and 1990s, which is the primary era that the Royal Commission is investigating, I have no clue about, but am appalled by the testimony so far. I do not doubt the body of the testimony of the victims who have come forward – there are too many to deny, and their testimony too cohesive – and I feel for the terrible abuse that they have suffered. And yet the Dr Paterson I knew, the principal for over three decades, was a very strong disciplinarian, a fine educator, and he ran a very tight ship. I simply cannot put that man together with the figure that has emerged from the Royal Commission – one who had allowed teachers who had groomed students to continue employment there, and even wrote a glowing reference for one he allegedly knew had had sexual relations with a student. Dr Paterson, do that? I don't get it. If those specific allegations are true, I can't forgive it. No one could. But, if true, there is tragic irony in it. Dr Paterson was always insistent that the reputation of the school was paramount, and beyond being pupils, we were ambassadors at large for the school. And yet, if these allegations are proven, it seems likely that it was that same devotion to preserving reputation that saw paedophile teachers protected from the immediate prosecution they deserved ... and the consequence, of course, is that the damage to the reputation of the school is now so much greater. But what is that reputation, good or bad, against the shocking damage done to the students who suffered at the hands of the paedophiles? How could that happen? That is the outrage, and that is what the Royal Commission must get to the heart of, not just for Knox, but for other schools around the country who tragically mirror the experience. I remain proud of having gone to Knox, and glad that I sent my sons there – there has not been a whiff of this in the modern era that we are aware of – but there must be a public reckoning of accounts for what has happened.
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