Treacherous Predators Are Not the People You Want Teaching Your Children

By Terry Sweetman
Courier Mail
March 8, 2015

http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/opinion-treacherous-predators-are-not-the-people-you-want-teaching-your-children/story-fnihsr9v-1227252877027

IT’S as though the fictional Mr Chipps was exposed as a wife beater or John Keating of the Dead Poets Society was found to be tone-deaf and stone-hearted.

I refer to the outrage as the old boys of Knox Grammar are force-fed the evidence of former headmaster Ian Paterson at the Royal Commission into child abuse.

Those who went to lesser establishments find it difficult to understand these old school ties but it is reasonable to wonder how Paterson reached such high office.

And how he stayed there for so long.

In two days of self-confessed idiocy, Paterson has supplanted Cardinal George Pell in the public rogues’ gallery of villains and fools when it comes to dealing with institutional child abuse. During his nearly 30 years of stewardship of the elite school, children were abused and exploited by at least five teachers who have been convicted of multiple sex offences.

Witness Lucy Perry gave evidence that Knox Grammer School principal Dr Ian Paterson indecently assaulted her during a stage production.

Paterson’s responses were, in his own words, “deeply inappropriate’’.

It barely seems adequate given his long record of protecting pedophiles, covering up for them, ignoring complaints, doubting and belittling victims, misleading police and denying his duty of care to children and his responsibilities under law.

He conceded his “abject failure to secure for you (the victims) a safe and secure place at Knox strikes at the very of responsibility of a headmaster’’.

Now he is “deeply and profoundly sorry” but whined: “This is a source of intense pain for myself and my family.’’

Former headmaster of Knox Grammar School, Dr Ian Paterson, leaves the Royal Commission. Picture: Bradley Hunter

I feel for his family but cannot muster a shred of sympathy for Paterson, whose life as a teacher and a carer has been exposed as a posturing charade.

I feel no particular sympathy for this faraway school, because it is another institution in which reputation (and money-raising potential) apparently came way ahead of the welfare of children.

In the grand scheme, the exposure of Paterson and the terrible saga of abuse under his reign count for little except to add some footnotes to a shameful story of betrayal in organisations that range from the Boy Scouts to schools and homes of every religious persuasion.

It is just another chapter to be found under the heading “rank hypocrisy” in the index of institutional criminality.

Royal Commission into Child Abuse (from left) Commissioner Robert Fitzgerald, Justice Jennifer Coate, Commissioner Andrew Murray.

It is difficult to believe that the commission can uncover much more except to add names and awful deeds to an ever-growing list of abusers and victims.

And, doubtlessly, to hear more fatuous claptrap from those who failed to protect their young charges and now protest their ignorance.

Again we are expected to believe grown men had no knowledge of things that were cried, whispered and sniggered about in the dormitories and dark places of countless institutions.

Yet the commission must go on, wading through a swamp of misery and anger as it trudges towards a conclusion in 2017 that promises little more than national shame and disgust.

Ribbons on the main gate of Knox grammar.

It is spending more than $500 million to uncover the truth about a scourge that the commission says would cost us $4.3 billion over 10 years to provide redress for the 65,000 victims of child sex abuse in Australia.

That would be made up of nearly $2 billion from government ($582 million of which would be bankrolling outfits that couldn’t pay up) and $2.4 billion from private institutions, many of them funded by mites of the faithful, true believers and taxpayers.

There is no escaping the fact that a disproportionate portion of that huge bill is the responsibility of faith-based schools and homes.

The royal commission’s brief is to investigate how such institutions and government organisations have responded to allegations and instances of child sexual abuse.

Its secondary role is to “uncover where systems have failed to protect children so it can make recommendations on how to improve laws, policies and practices”.

We already know enough to start concentrating on the latter terms of reference.

In particular, we need to know how these treacherous teachers, carers, guardians and gatekeepers were recruited into such sensitive callings and what we can do to stop it.

The infestation of abusers on the staff of Knox and other places suggests something systematically wrong with the way institutions have screened and supervised their servants.

It is not difficult to see a pattern.

I would be horrified to think that my street was home to half a dozen “don’t-tell-your-parents” power trippers and pedophiles.

I would be doubly horrified to think that the number of men (almost always men) who satisfy their dreadful lust on children delivered into their care in classrooms, dormitories, gyms and music rooms was in any way representative of the general population.

Is it time these venerable institutions took some lessons in vigilance and responsibility from their humble state counterparts?

Perhaps there is a clue to the causes in the longevity and professional immobility of people like Paterson, who rule for so long and are asked so few questions.

Maybe it is the very concept of the “old” that is leaving the stain of shame on so many old school ties.

Contact: sweetwords@ozemail.com.au