By Sarah McPhee
Warning: Graphic content
It was the talk of the playground, and tensions were high, one parent recalled. A teacher at Vaucluse Public School in Sydney’s eastern suburbs had been charged with sexually abusing students.
The case of Michael Anthony Lunn, also known as Tony, was splashed on the front page of the Wentworth Courier in March 1985.
Michael Anthony Lunn outside court during his judge-alone trial.Credit: James Brickwood
Three trials in successive years ultimately resulted in not guilty and directed verdicts, one hung jury, and no further proceedings, according to prosecutors.
Last week, the newspaper article was tendered to Downing Centre District Court as Lunn faces a judge-alone trial, accused of abusing eight other boys and girls in the 1980s when they were aged five to eight.
The 71-year-old has pleaded not guilty to four counts of sexual assault of a child and 11 counts of indecent assault of a child, including two considered alternative charges.
The mother of one of the present complainants told the court that within a week of the newspaper article, her son said words to the effect of “that’s what Mr Lunn did to me”.
She said police had asked to interview her son one evening, but “I didn’t make arrangements for that to occur”.
“There’s nothing that I can say that’s going to justify why I didn’t,” the mother said, adding that not reporting the matter was one of the “biggest regrets” of her life.
“I think I was naive; I didn’t fully understand what had happened to [my son] and the repercussions of that on his life,” the woman said. “I felt that we could protect him within our own family.”
She said there was “talk in the playground” among parents and teachers and “a lot of tension at school”.
The woman’s son, now aged in his 40s, has alleged Lunn put his hands down his pants and “molested” him on the school grounds.
“It made me feel a bit gross, like something was wrong,” he said.
The man was asked about “bad memories” of Lunn, and recalled his teacher once putting a bedsheet on the ground and playing Lionel Richie’s Dancing on the Ceiling.
“Every time I heard Lionel Richie, it reminded me of him,” he said.
In response to Lunn’s barrister Pierre de Dassel suggesting the song was released after the alleged abuse, the man said he thought Lunn “obtained it before it got released, somehow, I remember him saying that”.
He disagreed that he was making the accusations against Lunn so he could get compensation for the matter.
The Crown alleges Lunn had a sexual interest in children and a tendency to indecently touch or commit sexual acts towards students at the school.
“Much of the classroom offending allegedly occurred when the accused had the student sitting on his lap,” Crown prosecutor Sara Gul said in her opening address.
Michael Anthony Lunn has pleaded not guilty to charges against eight students.Credit: James Brickwood
She alleged this included while reading at his desk or during show-and-tell as he sat at the back of the room.
A second complainant, who alleges three incidents of abuse, said he felt “really embarrassed and ashamed” and “pretty scared” after he claimed Lunn kissed him on the lips.
That man alleged on an overnight school camp, under a sleeping bag, “Mr Lunn pushed my pants down with his right hand” while reading or telling a story as the children went to sleep.
“At times, I tried to pull them back up, and he … pushed down my pants again,” he said.
Under cross-examination, he denied making the events up and said he had had no contact with anyone from his class in the decades since leaving the school.
A third complainant said Lunn had been a playful teacher who “made everybody laugh”, and he remembered seeing him walking around the school with “lots of kids around him … like a Pied Piper”.
He alleged Lunn put his hands down his school shorts as he sat on his lap, which he believes was after he was appointed “child of the week”.
“He had this scheme, I suppose,” the man said. “I think that’s how I got on his lap. It’s so long ago.”
The complainant said he had been “scared” and “froze”. He could not recall telling anybody about it between when it happened, in the 1980s, and when he spoke to police in 2021.
“But my mother later told me that I told her,” he said. “I thought that Mr Lunn had been charged and dealt with previously … I can recall everybody talking about it.”
Another complainant alleged Lunn would put her between his legs as he marked her work and run his hands over her body underneath her uniform. She said she was “terrified and confused” and had an “impending sense of doom” when called to his desk.
The woman said she told her mother but was briefly sent back to school. This led to a difficult and tense relationship between them in the decades that followed, she said.
Prosecutors allege Lunn also digitally penetrated some students, who are yet to give evidence.
Lunn’s case is being decided by a judge, instead of a jury, for reasons including potential prejudice from evidence about his previous trials.
The prosecutor said Lunn started working at the Department of Education in 1979. She said the initial allegations “triggered” Lunn to leave the Vaucluse school in 1985, but he “ultimately resumed his employment” with the department as a teacher elsewhere around 1989 until he medically retired in 1999.
Gul claimed that Lunn filled out a worker’s compensation medical certificate in October 1998, citing the date of his injury as 1985 and the cause as being “more than a decade of false accusations”.
Lunn was arrested over the present allegations in August 2022, although some complainants came forward after that. The prosecutor said Lunn told police he had been a “hands-on teacher”, that he “wasn’t sexual”, did not do anything wrong, and his “acts have been interpreted incorrectly”.
Lunn’s trial continues before Judge Paul McGuire.
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