Opinion: Treacherous predators are not the people you want teaching your children

AUSTRALIA
Courier Mail

TERRY SWEETMAN THE COURIER-MAIL MARCH 08, 2015

IT’S as though the fictional Mr Chipps was exposed as a wife beater or John Keating of the Dead Poets Society was found to be tone-deaf and stone-hearted.

I refer to the outrage as the old boys of Knox Grammar are force-fed the evidence of former headmaster Ian Paterson at the Royal Commission into child abuse.

Those who went to lesser establishments find it difficult to understand these old school ties but it is reasonable to wonder how Paterson reached such high office.

And how he stayed there for so long.

In two days of self-confessed idiocy, Paterson has supplanted Cardinal George Pell in the public rogues’ gallery of villains and fools when it comes to dealing with institutional child abuse. During his nearly 30 years of stewardship of the elite school, children were abused and exploited by at least five teachers who have been convicted of multiple sex offences.

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