Tasmanian high school drama teacher faces trial over alleged sex attacks on multiple students

A former Hobart high school drama teacher exploited his position of trust to commit sexual offences against multiple teenage students dating back to the 1970s, the Supreme Court has heard.

A jury has been told of a former drama teacher’s sex assaults over a period of four decades.

A former Hobart high school teacher and Tasmanian theatre identity exploited his position of trust to commit sexual offences against multiple teenage students during a period of offending spanning four separate decades, the Supreme Court has been told.

Keith Athol Bates-Willie, 71, has pleaded not guilty to 14 charges – including rape, indecent assault, and the persistent sexual abuse of a child – allegedly perpetrated against nine different complainants from the late 1970s to the mid-2000s.

Eight of the alleged victims were aged 17 or younger at the time of the incident, the court heard.

In his opening address to the jury on Wednesday morning, Crown prosecutor Jack Shapiro said Mr Bates-Willie committed the offences while employed as a speech and drama teacher in numerous schools and matriculation colleges within Tasmania’s public education system.

Mr Shapiro said the defendant would employ grooming techniques such as paying certain students extra attention at school, encouraging them to call him by his first name, and even allowing alcohol to be drunk at his home – before initiating unwanted physical contact with his victims.

Crown Prosecutor Jack Shapiro

The court heard while some assaults happened on school grounds – including inside a photo dark room, and within the confines of a soundproof recording studio – other attacks took place in the defendant’s car, or in his bed.

One former pupil gave evidence that after he agreed to play a role in a theatre production, Mr Bates-Willie sexually assaulted him during a costume fitting, and on a later occasion attacked him inside the school’s dark room while he was developing photos.

Further attacks happened inside the teacher’s car after school.

“Bates would drop many kids home, but it was never in geographic order, often leaving me last,” the witness said.

“He’d make a bad Uber driver, put it that way”.

The complainant said that during a two-week stay at Mr Bates-Willie’s home while his parents were holidaying interstate, the teacher had lured him into his own bed to initiate multiple instances of non-consensual sexual contact.

“He’d say ‘Listen to your body – you might be saying no, but your body is saying yes,” the witness told the court.

“And I did say no. On every occasion.

“That was pretty much a nightly occurrence.”

Defence counsel, Jessie Sawyer, told the jury that Mr Bates-Willie was a man who had never tried to hide his sexual identity, not even in 1970s and 1980s Tasmania before the decriminalisation of homosexuality.

Ms Sawyer said it was agreed that Mr Bates-Willie had actively encouraged his students to become involved in the theatre, with many of his protégés being accepted into leading Australian performing arts colleges.

Ms Sawyer urged the jury to keep an open mind about the evidence being presented on the trial.

“Is there another side to this story? Is there more to this story?” she said.

The trial, before Justice Stephen Estcourt, continues.

Originally published as Tasmanian high school drama teacher faces trial over alleged sex attacks on multiple students