AUSTRALIA
The Guardian
Bridie Jabour
@bkjabour
Monday 2 March 2015
A former Knox Grammar school headmaster did not believe a student who complained a teacher inappropriately touched him because he was a “drama boy”, an inquiry has heard.
Ian Paterson, who was headmaster at the prestigious Sydney school for more than three decades at a time when there were multiple allegations of child sex abuse, took the stand at the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse on Tuesday.
He began his evidence with a statement apologising to the victims of child sex abuse at the school but when questioned by counsel assisting the commission, David Lloyd, he said he did not know about the sex abuse at the time and was aware of only one complaint.
The inquiry heard that a student came to Paterson in the late 1980s to complain a teacher, Damian Vance, had touched him inappropriately and asked him to engage in mutual masturbation. Paterson told the boy to go to the library and “think about what he was alleging”, he told the inquiry.
“He was a drama boy,” Paterson said as explanation for why he did not immediately believe the boy.
Paterson said he eventually believed him and counselled Vance but said he did not report it to police. “I was not aware it was a crime,” he said.
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