Geelong Grammar School

132 Pages·2016·3.19 MB·English

ROYAL COMMISSION INTO INSTITUTIONAL
RESPONSES TO CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE

Public Hearing - Case Study 32
(Day C097)

County Court of Victoria
250 William Street, Melbourne, VIC

On Wednesday, 2 September 2015 at 10.00am

Before
The Presiding Member: Justice Jennifer Ann Coate
Commissioner: Professor Helen Milroy

Counsel Assisting: Mr David Lloyd
.02/09/2015 (C097) C10037
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1 THE PRESIDING MEMBER: Mr Lloyd.
2
3 MR LLOYD: Your Honour and Commissioner, just one matter
4 before I call the first witness, [BKO].
5
6 Yesterday in my opening address I made reference to
7 allegations made against Mr Guzelian who's now deceased. I
8 just wanted to make it clear that Mr Guzelian was not
9 charged and has not been charged in respect of any of those
10 matters, though the allegations made against him to which I
11 made reference are the subject of evidence which will be
12 given by a witness this morning, [BKO].
13
14 THE PRESIDING MEMBER: Thank you.
15
16 MR LLOYD: I call [BKO]. [BKO]'s statement is behind
17 tab 8 in the statements folder. [BKO] will take an
18 affirmation and wishes to give evidence with the camera not
19 on him.
20
21 THE PRESIDING MEMBER: Mr [BKO], can I ask you just to
22 remain standing for the moment whilst the affirmation is
23 being administered.
24
25 <MR [BKO], affirmed: [10.14am]
26
27 THE PRESIDING MEMBER: Thank you, take a seat please.
28
29 <EXAMINATION BY MR LLOYD:
30
31 MR LLOYD: Q. If you look at the pseudonym list in front
32 of you, Mr [BKO], you are [BKO] as identified on that list?
33 A. Correct.
34
35 Q. You've made a statement to the Royal Commission and
36 you did that on 21 August 2015?
37 A. Correct.
38
39 Q. What you said in that statement is true?
40 A. Yes.
41
42 MR LLOYD: I tender that statement.
43
44 THE PRESIDING MEMBER: 32.5.
45
46 EXHIBIT #32.5 STATEMENT OF [BKO] DATED 21/08/2015
47
.02/09/2015 (C097) C10038 [BKO] (Mr Lloyd)
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1 MR LLOYD: Q. Mr [BKO], I invite you to read your
2 statement.
3 A. Okay.
4
5 "This statement made by me accurately sets out the
6 evidence I am prepared to give to the Royal Commission into
7 Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. The
8 statement is true and correct to the best of my knowledge.
9
10 I grew up in the Latrobe Valley, I have an older brother
11 and sister and my dad owned a newsagency. I was a very
12 happy kid.
13
14 When I was 10 years old I was sent to boarding school
15 because my parents were breaking up. Two weeks after I
16 started at Geelong Grammar, I remember my mum took me out
17 for an exeat on a Saturday and she told me about the
18 divorce, which was the first I heard of it at that stage.
19
20 Attending Geelong Grammar was disruptive and foreign
21 for me. I found the culture adjustment very difficult as I
22 grew up with a dad who owned a newsagency in the Latrobe
23 Valley town and I was surrounded by neighbours who were
24 shift workers at the SEC. In contrast, I arrived at the
25 Glamorgan Campus of Geelong Grammar, which is located in
26 Toorak Melbourne, and I heard boys talking about summer
27 holidays in Portsea and winter holidays at Mount Buller
28 which were all foreign places to me.
29
30 The boarding house at Glamorgan was an old building
31 where you slept on the verandas, they were very exposed
32 without proper windows. Glamorgan was a very
33 regimented place, very different from a state primary
34 school for me: the uniforms, ties, church on Sundays, lots
35 of rules. Life was very structured.
36
37 I also remember things like we had open showers and we
38 had to take 30 seconds in a hot shower and 15 seconds in a
39 cold shower, which was timed by a master or in fact by a
40 blue ribbon boy who was kind of like a mini prefect.
41
42 I don't think the boys were treated well at all at
43 Glamorgan. When I was in Year 6 I remember a boarder in
44 Year 2, a little boy, who was completely victimised by
45 staff and other boarders. The treatment of this boy is
46 still the saddest thing I saw at that school".
47
.02/09/2015 (C097) C10039 [BKO] (Mr Lloyd)
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1 I just add, last year, 47 years later I can still hear
2 the timbre and the tone of his voice as he cries and
3 screams and yells, and he's just a little boy. I am
4 disappointed that I didn't do anything to help him.
5
6 "I remember that Glamorgan and Corio had a
7 preponderance of male teachers. Many of the boarding
8 masters were also single men who slept not far away from
9 the boarders and who were totally enmeshed in the school.
10 It was a 24/7 involvement. They could summon you to their
11 room at times and they went away with boys on weekend
12 trips.
13
14 The only woman that I really remember was the matron.
15 I had my first female teacher in Year 8 for Japanese, a
16 Japanese lady, and the next was in Year 11. Until that
17 point it was an all male environment essentially.
18
19 My schooling however was successful and it was
20 important to me to do well academically.
21
22 I think the school was a different place by the time I
23 graduated in 1975. In 1969 it was an English boarding
24 school with strict rules and no court of appeal and no
25 chance for a boy to be heard or complain or hear a
26 grievance.
27
28 When I was in Year 11 and 12 it had changed to become
29 co-educational and far more relaxed which reflected the
30 social changes that came about in the 1970s, and it was
31 quite a change, quite an abrupt change.
32
33 In 1969, when I was in Year 6, the school would
34 sometimes take boarders on weekend trips. On one occasion,
35 we were taken to a region in Victoria which I think was
36 somewhere near Ballarat - it was out west, I came from the
37 east, so I didn't recognise it - but I can't be sure. One
38 of the teachers who attended the camp was [BIM], he was
39 about 30 years old, as I remember, and he was a boarding
40 master at Glamorgan.
41
42 I recall that he drove a sports car, which I think was
43 an MG, and there was always one boy allowed to ride in his
44 car. He was selected, it was seen as a privilege.
45
46 On this occasion, it happened to be me. I can't
47 remember when I first had much to do with [BIM], but it was
.02/09/2015 (C097) C10040 [BKO] (Mr Lloyd)
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1 I think in the weeks leading up to that camp he paid me
2 more attention. I remember that in the days before the
3 camp he had been extra friendly.
4
5 At the camp, we stayed in an open dormitory, an open
6 room with [BIM] and about 20 other boys. When I woke on
7 the first morning, I found that I was somehow alone in the
8 dormitory. I don't know how this happened, but somehow
9 every other boy managed to be sent out to do something and
10 I was enjoying the fact that I could still lie in and [BIM]
11 was lying a few beds away.
12
13 He started talking to me, in a very friendly way, and
14 at some point during the conversation he lifted his
15 sleeping bag to reveal his underpants, and I think he had
16 an erection, and he said, "Look, it's cold, why don't you
17 come and lie with me?" I remember feeling very
18 uncomfortable and I got up and I left. I don't know what
19 excuse I made, but I just took off. I don't think he spoke
20 to me again that weekend or really much thereafter.
21
22 I remember that, at some stage later, I think during
23 the next year, during my schooling at Geelong Grammar
24 Corio, that he disappeared; he was there and then he was
25 gone.
26
27 I look back on this incident as having dodged a
28 bullet, which is how I see most of it. I don't know how I
29 escaped the situation, but I did. I didn't report this
30 incident. I didn't think there was anyone or anywhere to
31 make a report to at Glamorgan. There was no possibility
32 for a boy to be heard about anything.
33
34 As I said, it was strict and authoritarian, with a
35 rigid hierarchy that started with the staff and it worked
36 its way down through the school years. Older boys had
37 authority over younger boys, which I think also led to a
38 lot of incidents of victimisation. Those older boys in
39 Grade 6 or P6 could be made blue ribbon boys and they wore
40 a blue ribbon and had quite a bit of power and could in
41 fact recommend punishment to other children.
42
43 In 1970, I was in Form 1, which was Year 7, or now
44 called Year 7, and I attended the Middle School at Corio.
45 I enjoyed the new campus much more than I enjoyed my time
46 at Glamorgan. It was a lot more open, a lot freer.
47
.02/09/2015 (C097) C10041 [BKO] (Mr Lloyd)
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1 I remember a teacher named Reverend John Davison who
2 was an Anglican Minister at the school. I remember he was
3 easy-going, sort of hip, to use the jargon at the time. He
4 kind of reflected the social liberalisation that came about
5 following the 1960s.
6
7 I recall that Davison would play Jesus Christ
8 Superstar and Joseph and His Amazing Technicolour Coat in
9 sort of divinity class, and other contemporary music. He
10 went out of his way to sort of be very friendly and one of
11 the boys, I think.
12
13 He was also very friendly towards my parents and he
14 showed an interest in me quite early, which I found
15 flattering, and when they would come down for open days and
16 so on, he'd make a point of talking to them and of
17 including me in things.
18
19 Davison taught his classes in a separate building away
20 from the main buildings in the school. I recall that he
21 developed an interest in hypnosis - and I remember he
22 invited a number of boys back to his classroom after
23 school, where he attempted to hypnotise them. I was
24 involved in two of these sessions. They were really pretty
25 stupid; I mean, none of the boys were hypnotised, they were
26 just scared to pretend not to be.
27
28 I remember going back for a second hypnotism session
29 with other boys into this same - the divinity room which
30 was off to the side of the school away from all the other
31 classrooms, and he darkened the room and we lay down -
32 Davison walked around the room as we lay on desks, and he
33 approached each boy, and he approached me and he placed his
34 hands on my genitals and he said, "Push against me". I'm
35 just trying to pretend to be hypnotised. I remember
36 Davison then unzipped my fly and then fondled my genitals.
37 I heard him do this to other boys in the room, I didn't see
38 it because I kept my eyes tightly shut, but I could hear
39 zippers and hear him move around the room and ask the same
40 question of all the other boys.
41
42 I recall that everyone pretended to be hypnotised.
43 After the incident, I don't think that anyone spoke about
44 what happened. I can't remember the other boys terribly
45 well - I wasn't great friends with them, we just took off
46 in our own directions. I remember that Davison invited me
47 to return, but I declined. Thereafter, I stayed away from
.02/09/2015 (C097) C10042 [BKO] (Mr Lloyd)
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1 him. And look, and I thought about the incident.
2
3 Toward the end of Year 8, I was lying in my dormitory
4 bed in Barwon, which was one of the houses, talking with
5 some other boys who were alluding to incidents of
6 impropriety involving boarding masters and teachers. I
7 think my sister at that time had been - she was just
8 schooling me to be more independent and she was at
9 university and had given me a bit of a voice. So I said to
10 the others that Davison had done something to me and, as a
11 result of that, and listening to the other things that the
12 boys were saying, I decided that I would report him, even
13 though it was a year earlier, that I would do something
14 about it.
15
16 I was old enough to know that what had happened was
17 wrong, and I guess I was a bit older and felt a bit
18 stronger. I approached two other boys who I knew had been
19 involved and I told them I was going to make the report.
20
21 The next morning, I think it was the next morning, I
22 reported the incident to Jonathan Harvey, another teacher
23 at the school who was I think in his mid-30s. The reason I
24 did that was because he was in our house and he was - I
25 think he was an ex-London bobby, or that was how it was
26 portrayed, and he was the man of action; whenever something
27 was stolen he would set out to find out who had done it,
28 and he was also my maths master.
29
30 When I disclosed the incident Harvey treated it very
31 seriously. I didn't go into full detail at that point and
32 then Harvey sent me away.
33
34 I'll just add that I'm aware that my luck was to go to
35 a gamekeeper and find a poacher.
36
37 Some time later I had a follow-up meeting with the
38 house master, his name was IIIIIIIII, who said that I was
39 not allowed to talk to the other boys. He had been
40 speaking, I believe, with the master of Corio or the
41 headmaster, I was never aware who else became involved, it
42 was all relayed through the house master.
43
44 ||||| asked me to write down the events as I recalled
45 them, and I believe that I recalled them well. There was
46 no discussion about how I felt or whether I was okay. It
47 was clearly a criminal investigation and I was making a
.02/09/2015 (C097) C10043 [BKO] (Mr Lloyd)
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1 statement. It felt like a trial between myself and the
2 perpetrator. At no stage did anybody say to me that they
3 believed me; then, later, thereafter, any time. I found
4 the process very threatening. I think the school was only
5 concerned about avoiding a scandal. I know the school was
6 only concerned about avoiding a scandal.
7
8 About a week or so later, I approached |||| to enquire
9 how the investigation was progressing. He said to me, "You
10 need to know that either you are going to be expelled or
11 Davison is going to leave. We are figuring out who to
12 believe. At the moment, it is not looking good for you.
13 Your stories don't match".
14
15 What they done was they got the other two boys'
16 stories and my story, and remember we were lying in a room
17 with our eyes shut and then described events as we
18 remembered them, and apparently they weren't word-for-word
19 and so that was the way the school was looking at it.
20
21 It was near the summer holidays, I returned to my
22 dad's house over the summer holidays and I told him about
23 the incident and the report. I remember that he was
24 furious. He wanted to contact the school, but I didn't
25 want him to, I said - I asked him not to. I wasn't
26 contacted by the school over the summer holidays at all.
27 I waited, not knowing whether I had been expelled or
28 whether I was going to be expelled, because nothing had
29 been said to me. The school didn't contact my parents
30 about the allegations. And even after the end of the
31 investigation, at no stage were my parents spoken to.
32
33 So I went back to school and in February 1972 I went
34 back to Geelong and, as luck would have it, where I'm
35 driving with dad in the car on the highway, the Melbourne
36 to Geelong Road back to school, and I look across and -
37 actually, I think dad was overtaking, which was very
38 unusual for dad to overtake - and the car that we were
39 going past was Davison driving with his wife and children
40 in the back seat. I can still feel shame. I told dad, and
41 I remember, he went along with the car, he looked across
42 and he glared at Davison as I shrank down in the seat as
43 low as I could get.
44
45 I arrived back at school and nothing was said to me.
46 Clearly, I hadn't been expelled, and Davison had gone. At
47 one point I asked, and I can't remember who it was, it
.02/09/2015 (C097) C10044 [BKO] (Mr Lloyd)
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1 might have been Jonathan Harvey but I can't be sure, it
2 might have been ||||, I don't remember, but I remember
3 asking him what happened and they said, "Ahh, you're really
4 lucky, we were going to expel you because we didn't believe
5 you, but he confessed", and nothing else was said after
6 that again. You know, by anybody; never directly referred
7 to me at any time subsequent to that.
8
9 After this event, I felt that there were some teachers
10 who treated me differently, in particular Jonathan Harvey.
11 I found that he was cold, I had a couple of run-ins with
12 him over some incidents at the time. I didn't really draw
13 a link between the reporting and the way that the teachers
14 treated me, but I look back and I suspect that that was
15 there.
16
17 To this date, nobody has acknowledged, as I said, that
18 what Davison did was wrong or that they were sorry. I was
19 ashamed of what had happened to me. At the time I didn't
20 want my parents involved, they weren't part of the private
21 school environment, they were very different, but I know
22 now that having my parents around would have been good,
23 because they would have offered me unconditional support.
24
25 The way the school dealt with this incident upsets me,
26 because I was made to feel that I was wrong. It was very
27 clinical, it was very cold, and even though he went and I
28 stayed, I always had a bit of a sense that it was partly my
29 fault.
30
31 I got the impression that the school simply wanted the
32 issue to vanish. They were not comfortable dealing with it
33 at all. I mentioned |||||||||, I thought he was a good
34 house master, I just thought he was extremely uncomfortable
35 with this and didn't know what to do; he was just being
36 asked to deal with me. They had no blueprint or no process
37 for dealing with sexual abuse or any other kind of abuse I
38 think.
39
40 In 1973, I was at Timbertop. An incident took place
41 there which still makes me angry.
42
43 Timbertop's an unusual environment, quite a brutal
44 environment. You're out in the bush with 14 other boys in
45 your unit and you live very closely with those boys, very
46 different to the Corio campus where it's more open and, if
47 you didn't get on with somebody, well, you didn't really
.02/09/2015 (C097) C10045 [BKO] (Mr Lloyd)
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1 have to see them much at all, but at Timbertop you're
2 forced together and it's a Lord of the Flies type situation
3 at times.
4
5 One night I was talking with a group of boys about
6 masters, sex and - I wasn't referring specifically to what
7 - I didn't say anything happened to me, but boys were just
8 talking about the masters and sex and so on and alluding to
9 it. Everybody in the unit was talking about, it wasn't a
10 conversation initiated by me or directed by me, but it was
11 just one of those things that, if you imagine, every night
12 boys in a unit will talk about all sorts of things.
13 Comments were made in the third person about masters
14 interfering with boys, and one of the boys suggested that
15 we should write a letter to The Truth magazine, which some
16 of you will remember, which was a sort of a rag, a
17 newspaper, and we should expose the school. It was
18 suggested that I should write the letter because I was the
19 best at English, and then we all went to sleep.
20
21 The conversation was never discussed again. I didn't
22 think about it again. I had no intention of writing a
23 letter to The Truth, nobody raised or discussed it.
24
25 About six weeks later, I was called to the residence
26 of the head of Timbertop, Bob Bickerdike, and it was at 9pm
27 at night, which was all very unusual. I didn't know him
28 very well, and it was a strange time, it's the first time
29 and the only time I was ever called up to his house. He
30 had an office there, I had no idea why I was being
31 summonsed, I had actually just had an operation and I had
32 just come back to school and I was a bit hunched over and
33 lumping up there. When I arrived I remember that as I
34 walked in the door, almost as soon as I got in the door he
35 said, "I hear you're going to write a letter to The Truth
36 about teachers and boys. I have spoken to the headmaster
37 about this and I want you to know that, if you do that,
38 you'll be expelled". And I had just sort of figured out
39 what it was about, and I was outraged thinking, this has
40 got nothing to do with me, nobody's going to do anything,
41 nobody's done anything and there were 13 boys involved,
42 what are you talking about? Boys have conversations all
43 the time and most of it was hyperbole, why was it raised?
44
45 So I was angry because there was nothing to it, it was
46 just late night talk and why was I being singled out? I
47 didn't understand and I felt victimised and threatened.
.02/09/2015 (C097) C10046 [BKO] (Mr Lloyd)
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