Former Knox teacher Christopher Fotis denies he is ‘balaclava man’

By Dan Box
Australian
April 28, 2015

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/former-knox-teacher-christopher-fotis-denies-he-is-balaclava-man/story-e6frg6n6-1227324465371

Image show purple ribbons tied to the gates of Knox Grammar following revelations of widespread paedophilia at the prestigious school.

A former Knox Grammar teacher suspected of being the “balaclava man” who sexually assaulted a young boy at the exclusive Sydney school says he did not want to give evidence to a royal commission because he is a “private man”.

Christopher Fotis was arrested in Queensland earlier this month after failing to appear at a previous hearing of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Mr Fotis, a former resident master at the northern Sydney boarding school, told the commission he did not receive a summons to give evidence at the hearing in February and did not follow it at the time.

“I did what I was legally entitled to do. I was a free man under no legal obligation and I based my movements upon that,” he said.

Asked why he did not want to appear before the commission, Mr Fotis said “I’m a private person. This is a very public hearing and I suppose if there is any reason, it comes down to that.”

Counsel assisting the commission, David Lloyd, has said a pupil at the school woke one morning in 1988 “to find a person under his bed dressed in a Knox tracksuit and wearing a balaclava sexually assaulting him” in his bed.

“The perpetrator became known around Knox as the balaclava man,’’ he said.

“A number of the boys in the dormitory believed that the ­offender was Christopher Fotis,” Mr Lloyd has told the commission.

Another former teacher at Knox, Stuart Pearson, has given evidence saying he told the school’s then headmaster that he suspected Mr Fotis was the culprit.

Giving evidence this morning, Mr Fotis denied he was the ‘balaclava man’. He also said he had no recollection of the aftermath of the alleged assault, despite reports that many of the boys from the dormitory chased the intruder out of the building.

“I’ve slept through earthquakes,” Mr Fotis said.

Months after the alleged assault, in February 1989, the Knox headmaster Ian Paterson, moved Mr Fotis from the dormitory building to a separate house outside the school gates, the commission heard.

A letter sent by Dr Paterson to Mr Fotis at the time said “No boys, of course, in or around House at any time. Please remove yourself completely from the Boarding Houses and only use the Dining Room for meals,” the commission heard.

Mr Fotis told the commission these instructions were “completely good sense and unexceptional.”

Mr Fotis continued to teach classes until later in 1989, when he resigned after being arrested for masturbating in his car while parked in a suburban street, the commission has heard.