Former Camberwell Grammar teacher Trevor Spurritt to stand trial
A RETIRED Camberwell Grammar teacher has been committed to stand trial over allegations he touched boys as he tucked them into bed at school camps over two decades.
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A RETIRED Camberwell Grammar teacher has been committed to stand trial over allegations he touched boys as he tucked them into bed at school camps over two decades.
Former maths teacher Trevor Spurritt faces 13 counts of indecent assault against six males between 1969 and 1991.
The complainants were then boys aged 11 to 14.
In a summary of charges released to the Herald Sun, Mr Spurritt, 74, stands accused of having twice performed a lewd act on a boy, 12, as he lay in a bunk bed at school camp.
The student stated he and seven other boys shared a hut at Frankston’s Church of England Boys Society Camp in the early 1970s.
He was lying on a top bunk when he claimed Mr Spurritt came in and, as he spoke to the students, put his hand down the boy’s pyjama pants and performed a lewd act.
Later that year, on a winter camp at Mt Disappointment, Clonbinane, the same complainant claimed Mr Spurritt entered his hut to say goodnight to the students when, again on the top bunk, the same act was allegedly committed against him. At the end of the year, court documents show the student no longer wanted to go to school because he felt unsafe.
A further three charges against three other alleged victims relate to incidents on school camps between 1969 and 1991 at Frankston, Clonbinane and Princetown in the Otway Ranges.
In the Princetown case, in 1991, a then-14-year-old student said Mr Spurritt would visit his hut, where he was on the top bunk, every night to turn the light off and “would stand next to each boy’s bed and pull the blankets up”, court documents read.
He claimed the teacher ran his hand up his left thigh in a rubbing motion, Mr Spurritt’s “eyes widening and his eyebrows going up and down as he rubbed”.
“Spurritt said, ‘It’s time for bed’ in a creepy, leering way”, documents alleged.
He claimed the “behaviour continued each night at lights out time” and he “pulled his blanket to his neck each night so (Mr Spurritt) would not touch him” but “observed Mr Spurritt touching other boys in the cabin, however cannot recall who they were”.
Eight other charges relate to accusations of indecent assault in the classroom at the private school in Canterbury against students from 1970 and 1972.
They include claims Mr Spurritt touched the genitalia of two boys from outside their clothes, rubbed his lips up and down a student’s neck and hit a boy over the buttocks with a wooden compass then rubbed his bottom “like he was trying to rub it better”.
One charge relating to a seventh complainant was dismissed during a three-day committal hearing at Melbourne Magistrates’ Court this week.
Mr Spurritt has pleaded not guilty to the charges and will face trial at the County Court on August 5, 2019.
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