Geelong Grammar ex-teacher admits sex abuse

A FORMER housemaster at Geelong Grammar’s junior school has pleaded guilty to molesting seven boys aged 10 to 12 between 1979 and 1987.

Geelong Grammar School

A FORMER housemaster at Geelong Grammar’s junior school has pleaded guilty to molesting seven boys aged 10 to 12 between 1979 and 1987.

John Buckley, a former director of the Brisbane Institute of Modern Art and the first director of the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, was then a teacher at Glamorgan.

The crimes occurred at the exclusive private school’s Toorak campus and at other addresses in Toorak and on the Bellarine Peninsula.

Buckley, who pleaded guilty in December to 13 charges including indecent assault, gross indecency, sexual penetration of a child, and possessing child pornography, is to face the County Court next month.

Yesterday, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse called for any victims of sexual abuse at Geelong Grammar to come forward.

It said: “If you were sexually abused at Geelong Grammar School, or have any information about sexual abuse of a child at Geelong Grammar School, the royal commission would like to hear from you.”

Any information provided would be treated as confidential, and those providing it would be protected.

The commission said: “If a hearing is announced, victims of child sexual abuse will not be compelled to give evidence if they do not wish to.”

Last month Geelong Grammar principal Stephen Meek wrote to parents announcing that the school had been ordered to produce documents to the royal commission.

He said the school had provided material relating to former staff members dating back to the 1960s, “some of which had already been dealt with by the courts”.

His letter made no reference to Mr Buckley.

Former Geelong Grammar staff member Phillipe Trutmann was jailed in 2005 for abusing more than 40 boys.

Trutmann, a boarding house assistant at the Anglican coeducational school, abused eight- to 13-year-old boys over a decade from 1985.

Mr Meek said the school would be writing to former students to encourage any who had been abused to come forward, and would also offer details of a counselling service.

The commission also said yesterday commissioner Justice Jennifer Coate would address a public forum in Warrnambool on June 17. Private sessions will also be held at which local abuse survivors can address the inquiry.

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