AUSTRALIA
The Guardian
Australian Associated Press
Friday 21 November 2014
The headmaster of a Hobart boys school charged with investigating a report of historic sexual abuse insists he did not try to cover up the truth.
John Bednall was principal at the Hutchins School for nine years from 1987. During this time he received a complaint from a man, AOA, claiming to have been sexually abused while a student in 1964 by the then headmaster David Ralph Lawrence.
In evidence to the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse in Hobart on Friday, Bednall said it was a complex matter and he was unable to determine the veracity of AOA’s claim.
“I never doubted the man was in a traumatic state,” Bednall said of AOA. “What I was trying to identify was how could the whole circumstance be best understood for the school to provide a proper response.”
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