Former Knox Head Goes Back on Cover-up Confession

By Ean Higgins
The Australian
March 6, 2015

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/in-depth/former-knox-head-goes-back-on-cover-up-confession/story-fngburq5-1227251006286

FORMER Knox Grammar headmaster Ian Paterson has reversed his evidence on key elements of the child sexual abuse inquiry, now denying that he deliberately kept information from police, protected pedophile teachers, or covered up in any way.

In the final public hearing of the inquiry into Knox by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Dr Paterson’s lawyer took him back over critical evidence he had given this week.

In his responses this morning, Dr Paterson withdrew a series of admissions he had previously made under oath.

Earlier this week under cross-examination, Dr Paterson had agreed that he had deliberately not told a police officer, who in 1996 had come to him to inquire about child abuse allegations against several Knox teachers, about what by then he knew to be a wealth of claims and in some cases admissions of improper conduct.

He also agreed he had misled the police officer, Inspector Beth Cullen, to protect the teachers.

It was a different time- Knox head

Principal didn’t view porn a crime

But under questioning this morning by his solicitor, Jim Harrowell, Dr Paterson reversed this stance.

Mr Harrowell: You had not sought to mislead Inspector Cullen?

Dr Paterson: Absolutely not.

In other evidence earlier in the week, Dr Paterson agreed that he had “covered up” child sexual abuse by Knox teachers over his nearly three decades as headmaster, in part to protect the reputation of the school.

But this morning, he said he had not been “motivated by a desire to conceal matters”.

Dr Paterson had in earlier evidence agreed to massive failures in the systems at Knox under his headmastership when it came to discovering, reporting, and acting on child sexual abuse.

But this morning Dr Paterson said in concluding remarks:

“I believe I had an outstanding system of pastoral care.”

In 2009, five Knox teachers were arrested, and later convicted, of child related offences, some going back to the 1980s.

Of those, serial pedophile Craig Treloar, who abused boys from at least the mid-1980s to 2003, continued to teach and coach sports at Knox until his arrest, after which he was jailed for two years.

He admitted to Dr Paterson in 1986 that he had shown a pornographic video to a boy, after which the headmaster moved him out of a school boarding house and suspended him for six months.

After about an hour spent in a room at the Commission, protected by several Commission staff, Dr Paterson left the building via the car-park, declining to speak to journalists, riding out in a car with jackets and scarves against the windows.

The fortnight of public hearings into Knox are now concluded.