Abuse by school chaplain during hypnosis

9 News
September 1, 2015

http://www.9news.com.au/national/2015/09/01/14/01/school-chaplain-tried-to-hypnotise-student

A Geelong Grammar School student was threatened with expulsion after reporting a chaplain for molesting him during a hypnosis session, the child abuse royal commission has heard.

The same chaplain tried to hypnotise a bullied student in an effort to have sex with him before later becoming a church vicar in suburban Melbourne, the inquiry heard.

Counsel assisting the commission David Lloyd said former student BKO will give evidence that Rev John Davison touched him during one of two after-school sessions in which the chaplain tried to hypnotise a group of students.

BKO reported the incident to a teacher but found the subsequent process very threatening and was told he may be expelled, Mr Lloyd said.

Another former student Dr Robert Llewellyn-Jones, who was 15 at the time, said Rev Davison offered him support because he was being bullied, including incessant "mocking" or verbal bullying.

But after several months of frequent meetings in 1971, Dr Llewellyn-Jones said Rev Davison called him into his study alone and tried to hypnotise him with a watch.

"He spoke to me about feeling heavier and heavier, and told me I felt warm, relaxed and safe and comfortable with him," the Sydney psychiatrist told the commission.

"He told me that sex was natural, that it was good for me.

"He told me he could teach me about sex and that I could do it with him so that I would get very good at it."

Dr Llewellyn-Jones said he yelled at the chaplain to stop when he put his hand on his upper thigh.

"He told me that it was not going to go down well with Mr Hayward, the deputy headmaster, that I had propositioned the school chaplain."

Dr Llewellyn-Jones said a Geelong Grammar friend recently told him Mr Davison had tried to hypnotise all of them as a group.

"I was also told that the reverend had left GGS under a cloud because it had gone too far with a younger boy.

"Another GGS friend told me that when some of the senior students became aware that he had sexually abused students, they were told by a senior staff member not to disclose this matter to anyone."

Dr Llewellyn-Jones said Mr Davison left Geelong Grammar and became a vicar at St Augustine's Church in Mont Albert until he died, and as far as he knew, neither the school nor the Anglican Church took remedial action to prevent him abusing children there.

Dr Llewellyn-Jones said he witnessed several of his peers being indecently assaulted at the school's Otway boarding house in 1969.

"The abuse may have begun as teenage sexual exploits but it ended in indecent assault."

He recalled seeing a 13-year-old friend surrounded by a mob of boys and subjected to what was called "blackballing", with a student wiping black boot polish over his genitals.

"My friend was whimpering. The mob's chanting then erupted into cheering. The deed was done."