Alice Springs principal Gavin Morris warned of cops’ inaction, days before his shock arrest
A week before his shock arrest on Thursday for allegedly physically assaulting five young children, Gavin Morris recorded an interview in which he did not hold back | WATCH
A week before his shock arrest on Thursday for allegedly physically assaulting five young children, Gavin Morris recorded an interview in which he did not hold back.
Filmed on a phone on the grounds of Yipirinya School in Alice Springs, where Dr Morris has been the outspoken principal for the past three years, he told of his fears of an unfolding child protection crisis.
Dr Morris said he believed a man with access to some of the nation’s most vulnerable children needed to be thoroughly investigated over a raft of serious allegations raised by students and staff.
He had made a report to police about the man, an entrenched community figure, involving a number of children, and he and other staff and students were interviewed by detectives and gave statements.
“What we saw around that cluster of disclosures last year was a real spike in youth crime and anti-social behaviour targeted at our school,” Dr Morris said.
“The students involved, who stole buses, who drove around the community, put themselves at harm and the broader community in danger, they were trying to tell us something. They were saying ‘we want you to listen, you aren’t taking action, we shared our stories, we trusted you with our most vulnerable stories’.”
In the interview with The Weekend Australian on August 1, Dr Morris was frustrated by what he saw as a lack of action by Northern Territory police and the Territory Families department about the serious allegations.
‘I wouldn’t put my name and my face on the line here, if I wasn’t 100 per cent convinced that there’s a very serious story here.’ – Gavin Morris
With inquiries still ongoing into the concerns, Dr Morris’s comments had not been aired when he was hauled into the Alice Springs police watch-house and charged.
NT education minister Mark Monaghan said Friday he was advised Dr Morris had been stood down on full pay by the school council.
Dr Morris’s registration as a teacher “won’t be a question at the moment … We will wait for any … processes to take place before we take any action, if we do indeed take any action.”
The former NRL referee with a PhD in Aboriginal trauma and bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education has rarely been far from either the media spotlight or a fight in his time at Yipirinya.
His series of running battles have generally centred on dire living conditions in Aboriginal town camps in Alice Springs, which he says is a central cause of a crime wave that has led to two recent government-imposed curfews.
It has earned Dr Morris, 46, both powerful friends and powerful enemies, some of the latter suspecting him of political ambitions.
But in no battle have the stakes been personally higher than the one he now faces for his livelihood, career and reputation.
Allegations against Dr Morris are understood to revolve around incidents of vandalism or trouble at the school, where the 375 enrolled students are taught in English and four Aboriginal languages.
One incident allegedly involves Dr Morris restraining children after windows had been kicked in and smashed, and another is alleged to have happened after paint was smeared throughout a room. Police said they had started looking at him only in late June.
The arrest of the principal leaked out when he was still in the watch-house waiting to be charged.
It was followed by two media releases from police and led to a storm of publicity, including commentary from NT Chief Minister Eva Lawler, two weeks out from a Territory election that is expected to be dominated by crime.
In Alice Springs, break-ins, hold-ups, car thefts, armed robberies and assaults involving children as young as eight are being documented daily on mainstream and social media, and some residents are in fear in their own homes, workplaces and public spaces.
Police initially announced “six victims” of Dr Morris were aged between eight and 13 “at the time of the assaults”, which were alleged to have occurred on “multiple separate occasions in 2023”. A police statement later reduced that to five counts of aggravated assault.
Dr Morris serves on the Alice Springs Town Council and took leave from his job as a lecturer at Charles Darwin University to lead Yipirinya. He spent hours in a cell waiting to be processed before being bailed.
Around the same time, police in Alice Springs had moved against another man in the community, laying a charge that flew entirely under the radar.
On Wednesday, July 31, this second, longstanding member of the community was served by police with a notice to appear in court on a charge of aggravated assault against a 13-year-old girl.
The 73-year-old has been accused of grabbing the girl by the arm and trying to drag her out of a car after a Sunday church service at the Aboriginal town camp known as Old Timers in February last year. He was not arrested or taken to the watch-house, and there were no public police statements, political commentary or any media coverage, unlike in Dr Morris’s case.
The Weekend Australian discovered the charge only after coincidentally approaching the ageing community figure at his home later that day to ask him about concerns in Alice Springs over his interactions with children.
Before being told what the concerns involved, the man replied: “We take them out for bush trips. I never molest them. I never touch them.”
Asked if someone had raised allegations of that type with him before, he said: “No. I love the kids. It’d be false accusations.”
He then volunteered that two police officers arrived at his home that morning and gave him a notice to appear in court in September for aggravated assault.
The officers “didn’t think it was very serious at all” and he was confident nothing would come of the charge.
He had “got angry” with a young girl who took other children away from town camp church services, he said. “I don’t think I ever touched her or anything. They’ve made a false accusation. She’s got some mental things. She’s caused trouble everywhere too,” he said.
Yipirinya School staff are among those who have been raising questions and concerns about the man, who has lived in Alice Springs and spent time in town camps for the past 40 years.
Dr Morris was talking to The Weekend Australian about these issues before his own arrest.
The principal said that in August last year, after a series of alleged disclosures at the school about the community figure, he spoke to staff and then phoned the acting commander of the Northern Territory police southern region, James Gray-Spence.
“He (Spence) was in the school 10 minutes later, and that night I had two detectives at my place interviewing me for a couple of hours,” Dr Morris said.
“They’ve subsequently come and interviewed staff and students. But nothing’s happened. Our community is crying out to find out what’s going on.”
The Weekend Australian put it to the community figure who Dr Morris had been talking about, that among other things he had been accused of hitting children.
“I’ve never done that. What I’ve done is, when they muck up in (his vehicle) I’ve got a wooden spoon, just a tap on the hand. Because they’re swearing or fighting. Once they see me waving it, they straighten up. Or if they are real naughty, they might hide under the seat,” the man said.
The man has a current Ochre Card from the government that clears him to work with children, he said. He denied he was ever alone with children, saying he always had another adult present.
‘I’m looking after the kids for them. I’m feeding them. He’s a neglected kid.’ – Accused community figure
However, only a day earlier, two Alice Springs residents say they saw him driving around in his vehicle with a young boy who should have been at school, with no other passengers.
Staunchly supported by some in the community including Aboriginal families he helps, the man said the allegations were “the devil’s work” and that he was not guilty of anything.
For an unknown reason he was being slandered and targeted as “payback”, he said. His cars had been stolen and written off, his home vandalised and two weeks ago a young boy he knew turned up at his home with a wheel spanner and “tried to kill me”.
He confirmed he had many interactions with children, from taking them swimming at the town pool to long drives to the isolated Ilparpa Claypans and Simpsons Gap. Regularly taking kids to McDonald’s and Hungry Jack’s, purchasing frozen drinks for children had become “one of my biggest expenses”, he said.
“Every Saturday we go out somewhere. I’m looking after the kids for them. I’m feeding them.
“The reason I take kids out is because I feel for them. They’re bored at the camps and hungry. I’ll get (a mother) and we’ll take them out and give them a treat.”
The man could not think of a reason the children he said he was helping were targeting him with home invasions and robberies.
“I know who’s done it. They have nothing against me, it’s just the stuff that they do,” he said.
When pressed to answer why he insisted he was never alone with children, he became angry, saying: “Get out.”
Then he calmed down and decided to continue to talk.
“If I have kids, it’s for their welfare, to feed them, look after them,” he said. “They’re making it up to condemn me, to slander me, because I’m a man of god, standing up for truth. The devil’s working, the enemy’s working.”
Residents say that over the past two years they have made a series of reports to the Northern Territory government about the community figure.
In the Territory, it’s legally required to report incidents of suspected child harm or abuse.
But the efforts of authorities so far have not been able to assuage doubts in the community that he is fit to have access to highly at-risk children.
“My experience has been that you make a phone call to Territory Families, through mandatory reporting, and you don’t see immediate action,” Dr Morris said.
“You certainly don’t get any follow-up in terms of whether something has been followed through or not.
“A lot of my staff come back to me dismayed. In this instance, for example, there were many comments made from the Territory Families representative that this story is well known.”
At about the same time that police were called to Yipirinya about the community figure last year, students broke into their school three times.
One group entered the office block, smashed open a key safe, randomly vandalised equipment and stole a vehicle.
In a separate incident last August, five children aged 10 to 12 ploughed a stolen car into a tree at 80km/h, none of them wearing seatbelts. Local residents say it was the community figure’s car.
The children were wheeled into hospital in neck braces and with green whistles for pain relief. Medical staff said they were lucky to be alive, Dr Morris said.
“It’s not normal to have 10, 12, 14-year-olds breaking into businesses and homes because they’re trying to get a message across,” the principal said before his arrest.
“I wouldn’t put my name and my face on the line here, if I wasn’t 100 per cent convinced that there’s a very serious story here that needs to be, firstly, uncovered and secondly, actioned upon.”
In a statement on Friday, the school council said it was “deeply concerned” by the serious allegations levelled against Morris and that “the safety, wellbeing and education of our students is our highest priority”.
Both the principal and the separate community figure now face battles to clear their names.
