Blackfriars Priory School rejects $1.5m child sex abuse lawsuit and claims it owed student no duty of care to protect him

An Adelaide private school besieged by multiple child abuse lawsuits has hit back at a $1.5m claim involving a serial pedophile, mounting a shock defence in court papers.

Stephen Stockdale-Hall abused 10 children, nine of whom were students of Blackfriars.

A top private school has hit back at a former student’s $1.5m lawsuit, saying it owed him no duty of care to protect him from sexual abuse, assault or harm.

Blackfriars Priory School has denied it was negligent about, and vicariously liable for, alleged abuse perpetrated by convicted pedophile Stephen Stockdale-Hall.

In documents released to The Advertiser by the District Court, the school says it fired Stockdale-Hall in October 1976 – and is therefore not liable for his time as a volunteer on its grounds.

Blackfriars also asks the court to throw out parts of the ex-student’s case which detail a phone hotline it set up in 2004 to receive allegations about Stockdale-Hall.

The hotline’s existence is “irrelevant”, it argues, to the case – which is says should be dismissed.

“Stockdale-Hall was not employed by the school at any time following the termination of his employment,” it says.

“Blackfriars cannot be found vicariously liable for his alleged conduct whilst he was no longer employed at the school.”

Stockdale-Hall served prison time for abusing 10 children – nine of whom were Blackfriars students – in the 1970s and 1980s.

The ex-student’s lawsuit is the fourth filed against the school in the past 18 months over alleged abuse.

In the first case, a man alleges he was assaulted by former principal and Catholic priest Father Martin Wallace.

Father Wallace has not been charged with any offending and has declined to comment on the allegations.

The former student further claims the school compiled “almost 100 documents” about the alleged sexual abuse “of multiple students” during a “22-year cover-up”.

In the second case, another man alleges he was assaulted by Joseph William Weygood, who stood trial accused of child sex offending and was acquitted.

That man further alleges Father Wallace punished him for reporting it, saying “don’t you ever say no to a teacher again”.

The school has denied both liability and allegations it owed the student a duty of care to protect him from Stockdale-Hall.

In the third case, another man alleges Blackfriars knew of the actions of convicted serial pedophile Ronald William Hopkins four years before he, too, was abused.

Blackfriars has denied each of the claims and denounced the accusations of a cover-up as “totally untrue”.

In his court papers, the ex-student who filed the $1.5m claim alleges Stockdale-Hall had spiked his drink and raped him in the school’s toilets.

He further alleges Stockdale-Hall’s crimes were “widely known throughout” Blackfriars’ faculty, and named five teachers who “frequently warned” students about him.

In its defence papers, Blackfriars denies that allegation and describes it as “vague and imprecise”.

In response to the ex-student’s claim the school owed him “a duty of care to ensure he would not be sexually abused, assaulted or harmed”, Blackfriars says it “denies the allegation”.

The case will be heard in court next month.

Originally published as Blackfriars Priory School rejects $1.5m child sex abuse lawsuit and claims it owed student no duty of care to protect him