Yipirinya staff made initial reports about ex-principal assaults: Court
A court has heard from an officer about the moment then school principal Gavin Morris was arrested on charges of assaulting students, which he denies.
Two staff members at an Alice Springs school were the first to raise allegations with police that then-principal Gavin Morris assaulted schoolchildren, a court has heard.
Former Yipirinya school principal Mr Morris has pleaded not guilty to five counts of aggravated assault against children under 16, including allegations he pulled the ears of two students and choked another. The trial is in its ninth day.
Alice Springs Local Court on Thursday heard police received a report on June 20, 2024, from Yipirinya employees Angela Ross and Christopher Tee making initial allegations that Mr Morris had assaulted several students in 2023.
Former officer in charge Sophie Campbell told the court that in the days that followed, police obtained statements from Ms Ross and Mr Tee, before another teacher provided police a list of potential student victims.
Between June 24 and August 7 last year, police took statements from child complainants and other witnesses, which involved travelling to various town camps around Alice Springs.
On August 8, police attended Mr Morris’s Alice Springs home and placed him under arrest, she said.
Constable Campbell agreed he “exercised his right to silence” at the time and has continued to exercise that right since.
Mr Morris’s barrister, John Wilson, questioned Constable Campbell about a number of occasions where she did not attempt to locate a person who was mentioned during an interview with a complainant.
Earlier in the day, the testimony of a mother, who told a court last week she witnessed her son yell “I can’t f..king breathe” while allegedly being held in a “headlock” by Mr Morris, was again questioned.
Local Police Constable Caitlyn Scheidegger agreed that the mother did not tell police her son couldn’t breathe, or that she saw Mr Morris holding him in a headlock, in her initial police statement from June 2024.
She did tell police that “Gavin had his arm wrapped around (my son’s) waist and was pushing him towards the ground”.
Constable Scheidegger said if the mother, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had said she witnessed her son in a headlock, “that would be in the statement and I would have got as much information as possible about that.
“If it’s not in her statement, she didn’t mention it,” she said.
Mr Wilson asked: “At no stage in your interactions with (the mother) in the lead-up to this statutory declaration or when you were taking it did she say anything to you that she had heard her son saying “I can’t f..king breathe”.
“No,” Constable Scheidegger said.
The mother has remained firm that her son “was saying that”.
The trial continues on Friday.
