AUSTRALIA
news.com.au
Lauren Martyn-Jones
The Courier-Mail
THE former principal of an indigenous boarding school in Townsville has told the royal commission the school dealt with about 20 sexual assaults a year.
Christopher Shirley, who was the principal of Shalom Christian College in 2006 when a 14-year-old female student was allegedly gang-raped by four boys, told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that his school was “very under-resourced”.
Mr Shirley said the indigenous boarding school was forced to divert money from its education budget to health and wellbeing programs to try to look after its students.
The parents of the teenage victim told the royal commission on Wednesday they believed the school tried to cover up the 2006 rape and that they were treated like “dumb black people” by Mr Shirley.
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