Adelaide music teacher Malcolm Winston Day jailed for abusing young student in 1980s

Adelaide music teacher Malcolm Winston Day has been jailed for abusing a young pupil four decades ago and will spend most of his 80s behind bars.

Malcolm Winston Day outside the Adelaide Magistrates Court, where he pleaded not guilty to child sex charges. Picture: Sean Fewster.

A music teacher and former ordained Minister who abused a young student in the 1980s “callously affecting” her young life has been jailed for at least eight years.

Malcolm Winston Day, 79, was found guilty of maintaining an unlawful sexual relationship for offending against a 10-year-old student at his Parkside teaching premises in the mid-1980s.

In sentencing, District Court Judge Paul Slattery said Day would sit on the girl’s right-hand side during piano lessons making “consistent physical contact with the victim on her right side while giving her those lessons”.

He said the touching progressed to sexual offences on multiple occasions.

When the student cried, Judge Slattery said Day had “told her to shoosh” and offered her a tissue.

“You caused the victim great distress,” he said.

“In the course of, and at the end of, these actions you told the victim not to speak of these events. That she would get into trouble if she told anybody and ‘what would her parents say’.”

Judge Slattery said these words “terrified and upset” the student and had “a callous affect on such a young child”.

As a result, Judge Slattery said the girl did not tell her parents.

The girl later joined a school choir to avoid having piano lessons with Day.

“Your offending... involved the abuse and exploitation of a relationship of trust and authority over a sustained period of time.”

At the time of the offending, Day was an organist at the victim’s local church.

Previously, the victim told the court Day’s treatment was “cruel, selfish and heartless”. She had also described him as “a monster to young girls”.

Judge Slattery said Day had “not only made a large part of her childhood terribly miserable but you have changed her whole life”.

“(She) has told this court that she has many unanswered questions that haunt her in respect of why you offended against her.”

Judge Slattery said the offending occurred when Day “life was in turmoil” and his first marriage was failing, before the father of three remarried in 1990.

Judge Slattery said Day had shown no remorse or contrition for his offending.

“You continue to deny that any offending took place and you have no insight about that offending.

Day was previously acquitted of a second count of maintaining an unlawful sexual relationship which related to the alleged abuse of the victim’s older sister.

Judge Slattery jailed Day, who he said suffers a heart condition adequately managed by medication, for 12 years with an eight-year non-parole period.