Anger over school sex cases

The Australian

A SPATE of new claims of alleged sexual abuse by a teacher at a prestigious Catholic private school has emerged, prompting calls for its former administrators to account for their actions.

The Canberra lawyer representing six former students at Canberra's Daramalan College said yesterday he was investigating several new complaints since The Australian exposed claims that the abuse could have involved dozens of boys.

Porters Lawyers principal Jason Parkinson said that among the new cases was one that allegedly occurred when teacher Paul John Lyons was at a previous employer.

A former Daramalan teacher who this month blew the whistle on the possible extent of the abuse, Terry O'Brien, said he had been inundated with calls from parents of former students demanding school administrators of the time explain their actions.

"To me, there's an issue of accountability to parents and students," Mr O'Brien said yesterday.

As revealed by The Australian this month, Mr O'Brien and two other teachers at Daramalan warned their superiors from the late 1980s of their concerns about Lyons's practice of taking groups of boys to stay at his home on weekends.

Lyons, who joined Daramalan in 1988, was still teaching there in 2000 when he committed suicide after being charged with indecently assaulting one Daramalan student. He had confessed to police that he had sexually abused the 15-year-old in 1989.

References

Courtesy of News Corporation, The Australian, 2007

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