Australian school attended by Prince Charles 'dismissed sexual abuse claims'

The Guardian
September 2, 2015

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/sep/02/australian-school-geelong-grammar-prince-charles-dismissed-sexual-abuse-claims

Prince Charles at Geelong Grammar school’s rural Timbertop campus in 1966.

Former pupils of the elite Australian school where Prince Charles spent two terms have told a royal commission that complaints of sexual abuse against numerous teachers over decades were ignored or dismissed.

One witness, referred to as BKO, said Geelong Grammar’s rural campus, Timbertop, where in 1966 the 17-year-old prince spent most of his time, was a brutal environment and a “Lord of the Flies-type situation at times”.

Australia’s long-running royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse is holding a two-week hearing into events at Geelong Grammar. On Tuesday, a former student, Robert Llewellyn-Jones, told the commission the school was a “hothouse of violent acts” with a “subculture of brutality”.

On Wednesday, BKO told the commission, sitting in Melbourne, that the school was more concerned with avoiding scandal than dealing with abuse.

BKO said the school chaplain, the Rev John Davison, had fondled his genitals and those of boys during supposed hynotism sessions. When he reported the abuse to a maths teacher, Jonathan Harvey – who was later convicted for abusing a student – he found the process very threatening and was told he might be expelled, he said.

“I know the school was only concerned about avoiding a scandal,” BKO told the hearing.

When he returned to school in 1972 after summer holidays, he was told by a staff member: “We were going to expel you because we didn’t believe you, but he [Davison] confessed.”

BKO said no one at the school acknowledged that what Davison did was wrong or that they were sorry. “I was made to feel that I was wrong. It was very clinical, it was very cold, and even though he went and I stayed, I always had a bit of a sense that it was partly my fault.”

BKO finished his statement with a message for abusers: “You may think that they’re powerless little boys who won’t be believed, but we grow up, we become men and we remember.”

Earlier in the week, counsel assisting the commission, David Lloyd, said abuse involving a number of teachers had occurred with the knowledge of senior staff from the late 1950s until 2007.

Prince Charles spent two terms at Timbertop, in central Victoria, before his final year at Gordonstoun in Scotland, which he has described as “Colditz in kilts”, and which has also faced allegations of rape and child abuse.

In 2005, the prince revisited Geelong Grammar, and described aspects of the regime at Timbertops, including 70-mile hikes “in a blood-stained shirt” as “hell”.

“Despite all this, I loved it all,” he told guests at a dinner to mark the 150th anniversary of the school, which also boasts Rupert Murdoch on its long list of famous former pupils.

On Wednesday, another former student, referred to as BIZ, said he awoke to find live-in boarding house assistant Philippe Trutmann fondling him, and pretended to be asleep as he was scared.

BIZ said he reported the 1985 or 1986 abuse to the matron, Jenny Davis, but she dismissed it. “I said: ‘Mr Trutmann has been coming into my room and playing with me in my bed,’” BIZ said in a statement read out by Lloyd. “She said: ‘He must have been looking for the cat.’

“I am sure it was pretty clear to her what I meant when I said, ‘playing with me in my bed’.”

BIZ said the abuse continued and he rigged up a warning system by tying knitting wool around his door handle, a towel rail on the wardrobe, a chair and to his toe, so he would wake up if his bedroom door opened. “The system worked just as I hoped it would and it woke me up,” he said.

Trutmann was later jailed for six and a half years for abusing 40 boys at Geelong Grammar between 1985 and 1995.

A woman who was part of the first group of girls to attend Geelong Grammar said her music teacher, Max Guzelian, abused her for three years, from when she was aged 10 until 13, in the 1970s.

BKL told the commission that the music department head. Malcolm John. told her the abuse was partly her fault. “As a result, I was told that I was not permitted to play in the band of any orchestra. I was to be excluded from all concert activities.”

John denies knowing about the abuse, having the conversation or excluding the girl from activities due to the abuse disclosure.

BKL said she was also repeatedly sexually abused by another teacher in year 12 in 1980. “The only reason the abuse stopped was because I finished school and left it,” she said.

Lloyd said Guzelian, now dead, was not charged.

The commission is expected to hear from one of five Geelong Grammar teachers who have been convicted of offences, as well more victims, during its hearings into the school.