AUSTRALIA
The Australian
NOVEMBER 25, 2014
Matthew Denholm
Tasmania Correspondent
Hobart
TWO paedophile senior teachers at an elite Hobart boys’ school fled the country after being informed they would be arrested, a Royal Commission has heard.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse earlier today heard evidence from former Tasmanian police commissioner Richard McCreadie that in 1970 the headmaster and music teacher at Hutchins School both confessed to child abuse.
However, Mr Creadie said that when he returned to the school to arrange for the two to be arrested — a week or two after the confessions — he discovered they had both fled the country.
The retired police chief said no extraditions were sought and that many in the police force at the time believed dealing with “hardened criminals” was more important than pursuing pedophiles.
“We accepted that they had left the country,” he told the commission, which has heard evidence that up to eight teachers at the prestigious Anglican school during the 1960s were pedophiles.
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