By Alex Crowe
A teacher accused of sexually assaulting five children at a regional Victorian primary school has pleaded guilty to all charges, as a court heard on Wednesday how the lives of his victims unravelled as a result of the abuse.
Peter Farmer, 64, was a primary school teacher in Newborough, a regional town in the Latrobe Valley, when he abused the female students in his classroom, on the school oval and at the local tennis courts.
Peter Farmer, 64, was accused of sexually assaulting five children.Credit: Wayne Taylor
Farmer faced eight charges of indecent assault of a person under 16 and two charges of gross indecency with a person under 16. He was accused of forcing the girls to touch his penis and touching their vaginas when he was a teacher at Murray Road Primary School, now called Newborough Primary School, from 1982 to 1988.
In one instance, Farmer arranged for two female students to meet him at the tennis courts after school.
One of the victims told police Farmer instructed her to run a lap of the court. When she returned to the teacher, the other girl was lying naked on a pile of clothes and Farmer was not wearing a shirt.
He told the girl, “I want to show you something”, before opening her classmate’s legs and assaulting her.
“I’d like to do the same thing to you, if that’s okay?” Farmer said.
Farmer was accused of then masturbating in front of them, before instructing them to touch his erect penis for about five minutes.
Another victim told police Farmer put his fingers inside her underwear every day for two terms, even while the nine-year-old was showing her work to the rest of the class.
Farmer was reported to the school principal in July 1988 by someone working in a nearby shop who said she witnessed him take his hands out of a student’s pants.
He was subsequently banned from the school but entered the grounds to leave notes for students before his official resignation in September 1988.
Police say they investigated at the time, but the parents of the victims did not want to put their children through the court processes.
Farmer was arrested in Queensland in 2022 after one of his former students, now aged in their 40s, made a report to police.
The protracted court proceedings were stalled after Farmer, who initially pleaded not guilty, failed to attend court on multiple occasions.
One of the victims said the lengthy proceedings had added to the trauma she experienced as a child, in her victim impact statement read to court on Wednesday.
The woman detailed how she’d begun drinking and smoking marijuana in her first year of high school, before becoming addicted to heroin.
“I only lasted a few months in higher education as I plummeted into addiction,” the woman said.
“I don’t believe I will ever be able to live a life free from the memories of what you did to me.”
Another victim told the court how she had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and had used sleeping medication for 20 years to escape her nightmares.
“I’ve not enjoyed my life,” she said.
A third victim, who read her statement to court, said the thing she’d wanted most from life was to get married and have children.
“Your actions destroyed this for me,” she said.
Farmer’s sentencing was delayed due to technical difficulties.
He is due to be sentenced in a Gippsland court next month.
National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).
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