A PRESTIGIOUS Tasmanian school allowed its paedophile headmaster to abuse children for five years to protect its reputation, a royal commission has been told.
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Former Hutchins teacher Geoffrey Ayling said widespread paedophilia among staff, including ex-headmaster David Lawrence, was covered up throughout the 1960s.
He told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse yesterday that Lawrence's sexual offending was deliberately concealed.
"The school knew that this was happening in 1965 and they allowed it to continue until Lawrence's resignation [in 1970], " Mr Ayling said.
"I believe that it was allowed to continue out of fear that the school would acquire such a bad odour that would significantly add to the deteriorating reputation of the school with Lawrence as headmaster.
"I believe that there was a conscious decision by the school to cover this up in the 1960s and to keep this information about its teachers from becoming public."
Mr Ayling said he knew of six teachers from the school who were believed to be paedophiles, in addition to another two with questionable relationships with students.
He said he once heard Lawrence tell a teacher, known as AOC, that he could not be rehired because the board would find out what they were up to.
"It was very clear that they were both in on it together," Mr Ayling said.
"I was astounded by what they were saying."
Mr Ayling said he did not report the abuse to police for fear of being ostracised, dismissed or sued for defamation.
Former Hutchins headmaster John Bednall, to whom reports of abuse were made in 1993, rejected suggestions he had downplayed the significance or severity of the issue.
A report Dr Bednall had given to the board in 1994 noted that the school was vulnerable to embarrassment and legal consequences.
"It seems inexplicable that despite three, possibly four, dismissals of staff for sexual misconduct in about a period of 15 years, successive boards of management appear to have been quite unaware of the seriousness of risk to which boys had been exposed," he said.
However, Dr Bednall said he could not be satisfied the original complainant, known as AOA, was entitled to an apology.
Having waited more than 20 years, AOA was finally issued the apology last month, but told the commission that he felt "f---ing insulted" by it.
Hutchins barrister Neil Clelland, QC, has told the hearing the school now accepts that four students were abused by staff, and that AOA's apology had taken too long.
