Truth of Child Sexual Abuse Rises to Surface in Film Don’t Tell

By Amanda Gearing
Weekend Australian
May 13, 2017

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The story of the Queensland girl whose fight for justice sparked a revolution in child protection in Australia — and brought down a governor-general — will be ­released in cinemas next week.

Don’t Tell is based on the book by Stephen Roche, the lawyer who represented Lyndal, a 22-year-old who brought action in 2001 against the Anglican Church over sexual assaults at the prestigious Toowoomba Preparatory School. Lyndal had been a 12-year-old boarder at the time of the abuse in 1990.

It was a landmark case, securing a record $815,000 in damages and exposing a cover-up by the Anglican Church that was found to have involved the alleged abuse of at least 20 girls by predatory housemaster Kevin Guy. The scandal eventually ensnared the then governor-general, Peter Hollingworth, who had been the Anglican archbishop of Brisbane at the time of the abuse.

It was the Toowomba case that first prompted calls for a royal commission into child sex abuse in institutions, finally ordered by Julia Gillard as prime minister in 2012.