By Angus Thompson
Parents at a prestigious NSW private school have accused the school of heaping “abuse on abuse” over its handling of a sexual affair involving a female staff member and five male students.
The 25-year-old woman pleaded guilty in April this year to months of having sex with students as young as 15 while working at the school.
A father caught up in the scandal at the other NSW private school told The Herald he and his wife held fears their son would harm himself during the fallout from the incident.
"All of these boys were victims under their (the school's) duty of care, an institution supposedly providing a safe place for the boys during their education," the father said.
His wife said that her son believed he was to blame for the abuse. "When [the staff member] pleaded guilty, he was like, 'it's not my fault?'" the mother said. "All the time, he felt that it was his fault." Her son was 15 at the time the offences took place.
The details of the case have been largely concealed by suppression orders prohibiting publication of the name, location and type of the school, as well as the name of the woman and her role within the school.
But in an extraordinary revolt, parents of affected students now want the school to be named, claiming educators need to be held accountable for their failure to properly care for the teenagers.
"Stating the school's name makes the situation real, makes parents aware that this school does exist and that, as parents, they should not be ignorant of the fact that it too could happen in their child's school," one mother said in an email to Department of Public Prosecutions solicitors seen by The Herald.
Why protect one school when Sydney Grammar School was not protected. Why protect schools at all. You should be protecting children, not schools.
It's understood NSW District Court judge Christopher Armitage will hear an application to lift the orders when the case returns for sentencing in September.
Some parents allege their sons received inadequate support, in the form of counselling, from the school, and that they weren't communicated to properly about developments in the matter.
These claims formed part of a detailed list of questions the The Herald put to the school, including whether the school believed it had breached its duty of care to the students. A spokesman for the school said: “As the matter is still before the courts, [we] will not be making any comment at this time.”
A court previously heard the staff member exchanged text and social media messages with the students, understood to be aged between 15 and 17 at the time, and arranged to meet them for sex. She had asked them to change her name in their mobile phones and to delete messages of their conversations.
It's understood the offences took place between late 2014 and September 2015, when the behaviour was reported by a third party. In an October 2017 letter sent to the school, a mother said she had been "alarmed" by several examples of inaction by those in senior school positions.
"It is unfortunate and alarming that a family could feel as though the school did not care about what had happened to their son," the mother wrote.
In a letter of reply, the chairman of the school board apologised to the family and said the headmaster admitted his communication had been "unsatisfactory". "It is clearly not what any of us would have wanted for your son and it is deeply regretted by all of us," the chairman wrote, adding the school intended to conduct a "full and formal review" of its procedures after legal proceedings had finished.
The scandal will also form part of the mountain of material before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse following one mother's submission.
"The school let the boys down. We feel this has been abuse upon abuse," she alleged.
In his response, Commissioner Robert Fitzgerald AM said the woman's contribution "would help make a difference. I note with deep concern your detailed account of the school's responses and the actions of senior staff," he wrote.
The woman will be sentenced in September after pleading guilty to six counts of sexual intercourse with a person under her care and three counts of aggravated sexual intercourse.
It comes after Bronwen Williams, a former teacher at Sydney Grammar School, was in February sentenced to at least seven months behind bars after the 34-year-old pleaded guilty to five counts of sexual intercourse with a person under her care over three months in 2016.
Court papers reveal that Williams, pregnant when she was sentenced, gave birth to a baby daughter by her husband on May 9. She was told two days earlier that she would not be able to keep her baby at the mother and children's program at the correctional facility.
Williams met up with the victim at her home, a classroom and a school storage cupboard, previously told the court she thought at the time they were involved in a “very mutual love affair”. She has since said she was “deeply sorry”.
According to District Court judge Paul Lakatos, the teenage boy said in his victim impact statement that Williams' domineering insistence made him feel he had few rights or personal choice in what was happening.
Judge Lakatos said she had placed her own needs above those of the victim.
I'm not sure 'needs' is the correct term here.
What the criminologist says
Adult women who pursue teenage boys in cases of sexual abuse are often trying to substitute failed relationships with older men, a criminologist says.
Dr Xanthe Mallett, Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Newcastle, said that in cases of abuse involving female offenders, the motivation was not necessarily sexual, but due to being able to exert control in situations where they previously hadn't.
"It's not necessarily about the sex with these offenders," Dr Mallett told The Sun-Herald.
"They have more emotional control over them (the victim) because of their age."
The Herald does not suggest these comments account for the motivations of the offenders in the adjoining article.
"It's an emotional need with these women rather than a sexual predation on younger males," she said.
Dr Mallett said there was little statistical evidence on such behaviours as reporting of incidents was rare.
"Reporting in this area of females offending against children is really low. Often the teenage boys feel they are in a meaningful relationship with these women," she said.
Between the ages of 13 and 16 boys become sexually aware but are still emotionally immature, making them vulnerable to older, more emotionally mature people, she said.
Dr Mallett said there was a stigma attached to males reporting situations of abuse by older women.
