Generational change is needed at St Kevin’s
Elite private schools have spent years moving around well-known child abusers, protecting their own reputations at the expense of the safety and sanity of their young students. Generational change is needed at schools such as St Kevin’s now, writes Susie O’Brien.
Susie O'Brien
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For many years, boys have done their best to protect each other from perverted, pedophilic school teachers.
“Keep away from the form teacher,” they’d tell the new boys.
“Watch out for the head of chemistry,” they’d whisper.
“Don’t ever be alone with the maths master.”
The cruel abusers paid to teach them were given nicknames by the boys. The Flogger. The Fiddler. The Tickler. This perverse shorthand revealed the terrible acts perpetrated in classrooms, dormitories and ovals.
This week we’ve had a sad reminder some school heads have been protecting the reputations of suspected and known child abusers in their ranks rather than caring for their students.
They, too, have been looking out for each other.
St Kevin’s College principal Stephen Russell and head of sport Luke Travers have been accused of offering glowing character references for long-serving athletics coach Peter Kehoe.
Kehoe was charged in April 2015 with one count of grooming a child under the age of 16, and was placed on the sex offenders’ register.
The allegations against Kehoe, many of which were backed up by Facebook messages, were alarming and serious. He told his 15-year-old victim he loved him, invited him to his house, and told him he was free to jump into his bed.
And yet this wasn’t enough to stop Russell and Travers from standing up for their old mate rather than the student in their care.
Kehoe’s young victim told the ABC he was “gutted” when he learned of Russell’s support.
Not only that, but the boy spent two gruelling days being cross-examined by one of the country’s toughest QCs, Robert Richter — the man who defended disgraced Catholic cardinal George Pell.
This is the kind of treatment that was commonplace many years ago.
But this happened just four years ago and both men still hold their prestigious positions in the Toorak school. Sadly, this is not an isolated case.
Michael Magazanik, of Rightside Legal, is representing abused students from the “who’s who” of elite schools: Geelong Grammar, Geelong College, Ivanhoe Grammar, Trinity Grammar and Camberwell Grammar.
These schools are the kind of places where boys wear their school tracksuits on weekends, basking in the status and recognition their uniform confers.
They’re not just filled with toffs from Toorak, but the offspring of parents working double shifts to pay the $20,000 to $40,000 annual school fees. St Kevin’s has students from 130 postcodes, including many struggling suburbs.
These parents work hard to buy their sons access to the privileged world of the old boy networks that promise favour and opportunity.
But these boys’ clubs are hampering renewal and modernisation in many such schools. Senior officials close ranks around depraved staff members, keen to protect the schools’ reputations at all costs.
Just last week, former Camberwell Grammar teacher Trevor Alan Spurritt was convicted in the Victorian County Court of nine counts of indecent assault.
Some of his victims, who were as young as 12 and 14 years old at the time, told the court that decades later they can’t forget the feeling of Spurritt’s hands on them, pawing at their genitals and touching their buttocks.
County Court judge Patricia Riddell called his offending brazen and predatory, with some of his acts even taking place in the classroom.
Camberwell Grammar headmaster Paul Hicks wrote a letter in 2017 after Spurritt was charged. He told the school community that a former staff member — whom he didn’t name — was found guilty of “events” and “alleged incidents” that took place in the 1970s.
This was despite the abuse occurring as recently as 1991. It noted the “incidents were not reported to the school at the time”. And yet, the boys all knew what Spurritt was like. Oh yes, they knew. Everyone knew about Spurritt.
Another example came from Trinity Grammar School in Kew. Teacher Christopher Howell took his own life days before he was to face court on an indecent assault charge. The school paid tribute at the time to Howell’s “extraordinary legacy”, describing him as “the best educator we have known”.
The school apologised more than 18 months later, retracting all tributes and calling the comments a mistake.
“The school abhors child sexual abuse and acknowledges the catastrophic impact Howell’s abuse has had,” a new statement from the chair of the school council said. It should not have taken them so long.
Schools around the country have spent years moving around well-known abusers, protecting their own reputations at the expense of the safety and sanity of their young students.
Confidentiality clauses and private settlements of as much as a million dollars have been paid to keep victims quiet. In many cases, parents and boys brought alarming allegations of abuse to teachers and principals, only to be punished, disbelieved or ignored.
MORE FROM SUSIE O’BRIEN
These days schools are required to report allegations — or even suspicions — of abuse to police. It’s not a choice, it’s a legal obligation.
Changing times are forcing a rethink into the schools’ handling of the allegations and the perpetrators themselves.
Generational change is needed at schools such as St Kevin’s. Last Friday Stephen Russell had the gall to send out a missive to the school community vowing to “lie low” until the “bitter weather passes”.
Let’s hope the cool wind of change blows through schools like St Kevin’s, removing those who protect the reputation of paedophiles.
Susie O’Brien is a Herald Sun columnist