AUSTRALIA
The Guardian
Parents sent their boys to Knox Grammar to get the best start in life. Instead some were abused – and it went on for decades
Bridie Jabour
@bkjabour
Friday 6 March 2015
When Dr Ian Paterson, the man who presided over three decades of child sexual abuse at one of Sydney’s most prestigious schools, took to the stand at the royal commission into child sex abuse, he said he came to say sorry – sorry that scores of boys put into the care of Knox Grammar school were sexually abused over decades, sorry it happened under his watch, and also sorry that he did not know.
“As headmaster I am responsible for all that occurs during my headmastership; there were matters that I knew about and other matters that I did not. However, without doubt I should have known and I should have stopped the events which led to the abuse and its tragic consequences for those boys in my care and their families,” the 81-year-old said in the stand, reading from a prepared statement.
“ … An apology seems totally inadequate but I do so with an awful feeling of uselessness in my heart.”
In his evidence he then went on to detail how a resident master who had been convicted of molesting two girls did not undergo a criminal check before being hired by Knox in 1987 because “the times were quite different then, we judged people very much ourselves.”
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