Former student blames St Joseph’s College for ongoing pain after table saw incident

A former student of St Joseph’s College was severely injured when a table saw malfunctioned in wood shop class.

St Joseph's College Geelong has pleaded guilty to failing to ensure a safe environment inside its woodworking classroom after an incident involving a Year 9 student.

A St Joseph’s College student was injured in a woodwork class after a table saw malfunctioned, leaving him struggling with ongoing pain and “frustrated” with the school for ending his career dreams.

The Trustees of Edmund Rice Education, which runs the Herne Hill school, pleaded guilty in Geelong Magistrates Court to two charges of failing to provide a safe working environment and failing to ensure persons were not exposed to risk.

During a year nine woodworking class in June 2018, a teacher was pushing a piece of timber through the table saw when it malfunctioned, causing a piece of wood to break off and hit a then-14-year-old student who had been standing four metres away.

The teacher was not authorised to use the machine.

The student suffered nerve and muscle damage to his forehead and chin, which he said still causes him pain when touched almost five years on.

He also requires ongoing dental work for a broken tooth.

Principal Tony Paatsch attended the hearing on Thursday.

In a victim impact statement read to the court, the student said teachers had him speak directly to paramedics but due to being “physically and emotionally numb” and because he said teachers “downplayed the incident”, paramedics did not take him to hospital.

“How was I, as a teenager, able to blithely assess my own injuries and needs in this situation?,” the student, who is now 19, said.

The student said he woke up about a week later to find blood on his face and looked in the mirror to find “the injury was so deep I could see many layers beneath the skin underneath”.

He said he was “shocked to see my own skull”.

The student said he had hoped to study aerospace engineering but between the emotional impacts of the injury and time off to recover, his grades slipped and he dropped out before his senior years.

He alleged the “teachers were not helpful” and he has “so much frustration when I think (back to when) I had so much ahead of me”.

“I look back and see the school stopped encouraging me to pursue my dreams and my grades dropped so much,” the student alleged.

Barrister Samuel Stafford, who represented the trustees, said the school “deeply regrets the incident took place”.

The school has since “continued to monitor and evaluate its processes to ensure it has a safe learning environment”.

St Joseph’s College principal Tony Paatsch said in a statement to the Geelong Advertiser: “While we cannot make a public statement until the matter is finalised in court, we will continue to work with the WorkSafe team and remain focused on delivering the safest possible learning environment for our entire school community.”

Magistrate Simon Guthrie will hand down a sentence next week.

Originally published as Former student blames St Joseph’s College for ongoing pain after table saw incident