Known child abusers ‘shielded’ by bureaucrats: inquiry into Tas education department cover-ups

An inquiry has found Tasmanian education department leaders allowed serial child abusers to keep teaching for decades, while even now some children’s complaints are “assumed to be untrue”.

Tasmanian Education Minister Sarah Courtney defended the suppression of much of a damning report into her department’s handling of child sex abuse allegations . Picture: Richard Jupe

An inquiry has found Tasmanian Education Department leaders allowed serial child abusers to teach for decades, while even now some children’s complaints are “assumed to be untrue”.

The independent inquiry, following claims of multiple cover-ups of child sex abuse in schools, found past and ongoing cultural problems failed to protect and prioritise the safety of children.

“We found that, particularly in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, the predominant response of DoE to sexual abuse concerns and complaints was to protect itself from what it apparently saw as the legal, financial, and reputational risks attached to those concerns and complaints,” it found.

“We have found it deeply disturbing that, as concerns, complaints and ineffectual responses … piled up in DoE’s records, serial abusers … were not just allowed to keep teaching for decades, but that DoE leaders and others so wilfully disregarded the obvious risks and harms to students.

“DoE responses … routinely involved deflecting or ignoring concerns and complaints, often by disbelieving or blaming students, and by shielding alleged or known sexual abusers.”

Much of the report, by forensic psychologist Stephen Smallbone and legal academic Tim McCormack, was suppressed by the Tasmanian government for “a range of concerns and legal impediments”. The main findings and recommendations, released on Tuesday, were in part redacted.

Even so, they pulled few punches in describing an education system still struggling to adequately prevent and respond to both child-to-child abuse and adult-to-child abuse in schools.

Past protection of abusers, the report found, could not be dismissed as merely “just the way things were back then”. “Evidence in DoE’s own records shows that DoE officials very often acted in ways that were completely at odds with community expectations at the time,” the report concluded.

“We saw many examples of parents … teachers and principals, actively but ultimately unsuccessfully opposing the decisions of DoE to transfer known abusers to a new school.”

While persuaded DoE culture and leadership had “changed for the better, particularly over the last decade”, investigators found “residual cultural problems”.

A DoE statement said it was “deeply sorry for the historical abuse … and apologise unreservedly to the victims and survivors”.

Attorney-General Elise Archer and Education Minister Sarah Courtney said the report had been provided to the state commission of inquiry into state agencies’ responses to child sexual abuse.