Stalking, sex harassment claims at fake principal Neil Lennie’s school

A staffer says she was blamed for being “young and attractive” after accusing a teacher of sexual harassment at fake principal Neil Lennie’s shambolic school.

Neil Lennie’s former school was labelled the “worst case” the teaching regulator had ever seen. Picture: David Geraghty

A student was allegedly stalked by a teacher at Neil Lennie’s defunct school while a former staff member says her claims of being sexually harassed by a colleague were ignored by the fake principal.

The Sunday Herald Sun can reveal the two incidents are among a series of complaints about Lennie’s now shuttered New Generation College as a trove of secret documents show the “perilous” state of the campus, labelled the “worst case” the regulator had ever seen.

The former female staff member claims Lennie dismissed her pleas for help and instead told her the sexual harassment by a male colleague was her own fault for being “young and attractive”.

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She said she asked Lennie to “take some action” when the colleague’s harassment turned physical but was “made to feel as though I had invented the entire situation”.

“Lennie blamed the teacher’s drinking problem on the sexual harassment and abuse. And he blamed me for being ‘young and attractive’,” she said.

In a separate complaint, a male student at the college was also allegedly being stalked by his female teacher, Fiona Austin.

The teenager took out multiple intervention orders against Ms Austin in a case that has played out in Melbourne courts for more than five years.

New Generation College was shut in 2015 after more than a decade in operation, while founding principal Lennie — fingered as “a lot of the part of the problem” — went on to launch a new education venture.

Files from a civil hearing launched to save New Generation College revealed why it was among just a handful of schools to ever be shut down in the state’s history.

Lennie outside Melbourne Magistrates Court. Picture: Tony Gough

It was considered as having disregard for student welfare, with missing student medical and accommodation records, abysmal study scores putting pupils in the bottom 0.4 per cent of the state, and plummeting attendance numbers.

The documents were obtained by the Sunday Herald Sun through the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal after multiple Freedom of Information requests were rejected by the Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority, which shut the school down.

The VRQA claimed digging up documents that showed why they closed the school would “divert its resources substantially and unreasonably from its other operations”.

The regulator initially probed the school in 2009 — around the time questions were raised about Lennie’s teaching qualifications — and again launched an investigation into the campus in 2014-15, when Lennie was sacked from the school and charged with unregistered teaching.

Colin Turner, an education consultant brought in to “save” the school, told the Sunday Herald Sun: “It wasn’t until I actually walked into the principal’s (Lennie’s) office that I really saw what a problem there was.

“The disarray was that there was no leadership from the principal’s office,” Mr Turner, who runs tutoring company Topscore Education, said.

Meanwhile, Ms Austin faces four charges of stalking and four of using a carriage service to harass in relation to her former New Generation College student.

She will represent herself in an 18-day trial at the County Court from August 20.