By Adam Carey and Michael Fowler
The headmaster of a prestigious Melbourne school should resign, child abuse campaigner Chrissie Foster says, over reports that he gave a character reference to a school coach convicted of sexual grooming.
ABC News reported on Monday that Stephen Russell, headmaster of Catholic boys' school St Kevin’s College, provided a reference in 2015 to school coach Peter Kehoe, who was convicted of grooming a year 9 boy.
Former St Kevin's College coach Peter Kehoe was convicted of grooming a student at the Catholic boys' school.Credit: Pat Scala
Kehoe was given a community corrections order and placed on the sex offenders' register for eight years, the ABC reports ahead of a Four Corners investigation due to screen on Monday night.
Kehoe's grooming included encouraging a year 9 student to get into his bed and inviting the boy to engage in a sex act.
Mr Russell remains headmaster of the Toorak-based school but Ms Foster, one of Australia’s most prominent advocates for victims of child sexual abuse at the hands of institutional figures, said his actions suggested he should not be.
“I think he has shown that he should not be headmaster,” Ms Foster said.
Chrissie Foster, who had two daughters who were abused by a Catholic priest. Credit: Jason South
His decision to give a reference to a magistrate suggests “that these children are of no importance, [that] our children don't matter to the clergy, the priesthood or their school system,” she said.
“I think the actions he took say that he is not a responsible person; he is part of the problem, not part of the solution.”
Two of Ms Foster’s daughters were sexually abused by Catholic priest Kevin O’Donnell in the 1990s while they were primary school students.
Father O’Donnell lived next door to Oakleigh Sacred Heart Primary School when he abused them.
Ms Foster gave critical testimony to the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into the Handling of Child Abuse by Religious and Other Organisations and the national Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
She said Mr Russell’s reference for the school's former coach indicated he had learnt nothing from the royal commission’s findings.
St Kevin’s has been bracing for a Four Corners report scheduled to screen on Monday night on its handling of the matter amid claims it breeds a toxic culture.
Late last year, St Kevin's students were widely condemned after a group in school uniform were filmed making a sexually derogatory chant on a crowded tram.
"I wish that all the ladies/ Were holes in the road/ If I was a dump truck/ I'd fill them with my load,” the boys' call-and-response chant went.
In reference to Four Corners’ looming report, Mr Russell wrote to parents last week with some lines from Irish poet John O’Donohue:
‘This is the time to be slow/ Lie low to the wall/ Until the bitter weather passes’.
The school has been contacted for comment.
St Kevin’s College in Melbourne is directed by Edmund Rice Education Australia, which has also been contacted for comment.
St Kevin’s Old Collegians president Andrew Rosengren said the group would not be making any comment on the accusations.