AUSTRALIA
The Guardian
Staff and agencies
Wednesday 2 September 2015
Former pupils of the elite Australian school where Prince Charles spent two terms have told a royal commission that complaints of sexual abuse against numerous teachers over decades were ignored or dismissed.
One witness, referred to as BKO, said Geelong Grammar’s rural campus, Timbertop, where in 1966 the 17-year-old prince spent most of his time, was a brutal environment and a “Lord of the Flies-type situation at times”.
Australia’s long-running royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse is holding a two-week hearing into events at Geelong Grammar. On Tuesday, a former student, Robert Llewellyn-Jones, told the commission the school was a “hothouse of violent acts” with a “subculture of brutality”.
On Wednesday, BKO told the commission, sitting in Melbourne, that the school was more concerned with avoiding scandal than dealing with abuse.
BKO said the school chaplain, the Rev John Davison, had fondled his genitals and those of boys during supposed hynotism sessions. When he reported the abuse to a maths teacher, Jonathan Harvey – who was later convicted for abusing a student – he found the process very threatening and was told he might be expelled, he said.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.