PMSA schools scandal: Somerville House staff exodus escalates

A BRISBANE elite school scandal has deepened with another staff resignation, decrying the treatment of the principal who quit earlier this month.

Somerville House dean of students Karon Graham has resigned in protest.

• More elite school staff quit
• Parents blast ‘GoT in cardigans’
• Somerville House principal resigns

THE exodus of senior staff at one of Queensland’s most prestigious schools has continued in the wake of a deepening scandal involving claims of collusion, breach of privacy, code of conduct violations and lewd behaviour.

Somerville House dean of students Karon Graham resigned today in protest against the Presbyterian and Methodist Schools Association, which governs the school along with Brisbane Boys’ College, Clayfield College and Sunshine Coast Grammar School.

Flo Kearney resigned as Somerville House principal earlier this month.

Ms Graham said she was taking a stand over the treatment of the school’s respected principal Flo Kearney, whose shock resignation on October 10 exposed a simmering scandal involving

the alleged cover-up by the peak church body of the “unauthorised” downloading of thousands of confidential files of some of Queensland’s most prominent identities.

“I love the school heart and soul but I can’t just stand by and just think that it’s OK for all of this to happen so I guess it’s a matter of principal and integrity that I can’t work for the PMSA... in a supposedly Christian environment when (the PMSA’s) behaviour towards Mrs Kearney has been nothing short of bullying and un-Christian at every level,” she said.

Brisbane Boys’ College is another PMSA school caught up in the scandal. Picture: Steve Pohlner/AAP

Ms Kearney had been tasked with investigating the unauthorised downloading of files. In June, senior Somerville House employee Rick Hiley left the school after admitting he downloaded files. PMSA launched an internal investigation which eventually cleared Mr Hiley of any wrongdoing.

The PMSA called Mr Hiley’s performance “exemplary” and hired him as the organisation’s executive manager on $275,000-a-year position plus a $75,000 Mercedes-Benz car package.

Subsequent internal audits conducted by the Somerville House Council and Somerville House Foundation raised allegations of the “unauthorised retrieval and removal” of more than 10,000 files as well as text messages between Mr Hiley and another PMSA official in which they discussed having “covert” meetings in a nude sauna at a Korean bathhouse.

Ms Graham’s resignation today came less than a month after Somerville House head of boarding Pamela Hodgetta resigned.

Ms Graham said the treatment of Mrs Kearney was “probably the worst example of hypocrisy that I’ve seen in my teaching career”.

“You have to question what their ulterior motives are and I can only speculate on what that might be but it seems to me that they want Mr Hiley at all costs,” she said.

“Mrs Kearney has done absolutely nothing wrong, she is a woman of great integrity and for her to have resigned is a tragedy for the school community.”