Topical Teaching

A pedophile teacher was allowed to continue working even though the school principal and student protection officer were aware of sex abuse cases against him.

This leads me to a most obvious question:

Would the Principal have intervened if this teacher taught his child?

May I answer? Of course not!

And this leads me to one of my biggest gripes against the current education system. Teachers and Principals are trained not to be emotionally involved with their students. This destructive advice leads them to becoming emotionally distant.

We must become emotionally involved with the needs and rights of our students. We must treat them, at times, as if they were our own (of course within the proper professional boundaries). I often refer to my students as my kids. Of course, I know they are not literally “my kids”, but it’s just an expression illustrating my general concern for their best interests.

If teachers and school staff are taught to become less distant and to fight for the well being of their students, these types of issues just do not arise:

A pedophile teacher continued to work and abuse girls at a Catholic primary school despite both the principal and the student protection officer knowing about child sex abuse complaints against him.

Gerard Byrnes was eventually jailed in 2010 after pleading guilty to 44 counts of abusing 13 girls between 2007 and 2008.

School Principal Terence Hayes and student protection officer Catherine Long first heard a complaint from a schoolgirl, who said Byrnes touched her breast, in September 2007.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse heard in Brisbane on Monday that during a meeting with the girl’s father, Mr Hayes said he would deal with Byrnes internally.

But neither Mr Hayes nor Ms Long told police or parents about the allegation.

Ms Long said Byrnes regularly gave girls lollies and had them sit on his lap, and girls were “hanging off him” when he was on playground duty, but she thought he was just a popular teacher.

Meanwhile other parents began to find out that their daughters had been abused from police, who had been told by other victims.

A mother, known as KP, told the inquiry that after police swooped on Byrnes, the Catholic Education Office and the school denied any knowledge of allegations against him.

“I found out later, through media reports and court processes, that this was not even true – Mr Hayes was aware of complaints about Mr Byrnes for over a year but did not report them to police,” KP told the inquiry by videolink.

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Click on the link to read A World Where Sex Offenders Have “Human Rights” and their Victims Have None