The chairman of Brisbane Grammar has broken down after saying the prestigious school could not admit legal responsibility for allegations of sexual abuse of more than 70 students because its insurer threatened not to pay for settlements, the royal commission heard.
Howard Stack told the inquiry this was despite him believing students had been abused and that there were credible accounts that then headmaster, Maxwell Howell, knew of these allegations as early as 1979.
Asked at the hearing in Brisbane on Friday whether he agreed the school had not acted fairly towards alleged victims seeking compensation for abuse by counsellor Kevin Lynch, Stack said: “From the boys’ point of view, I can understand that totally.
“From the board’s perspective I had no option. I was between a rock and a hard place. If the school was going to get indemnity, we could not admit legal liability.
“When all this happened, I came out so fast and admitted moral responsibility. I could do no more.”
Stack, a prominent businessman and former lawyer with one of Australia elite law firms, then appeared temporarily overcome in the witness box.
The commission is probing alleged sexual abuse by Lynch, carried out under the guise of “relaxation therapy”, at both Brisbane Grammar and St Paul’s school from more than two decades until his suicide after being charged with indecent dealing in 1997.
Brisbane Grammar settled with some 75 students then, but Stack acknowledged the total number of victims could reach 100 or more.
Stack said he took no part in deciding the size of payouts, which included $45,000 plus costs to one student whose abuse by Lynch was so severe he suffered an organic brain injury.
Two weeks before mediation in 2002, the school’s insurer told the school it would not cover any payouts to victims because of evidence Howell knew of alleged abuse by Lynch as early as 1979.
Stack told the commission that the credibility of Howell’s continued denials was now “not looking good” but it was not his role to be “the judge” of that during the time of mediation.
Brisbane Grammar “never questioned the fact of abuse” in mediation with students, Stack said.
However, he said: “I’m a lawyer by training, I guess, and whether or not the school was responsible for criminal conduct on the part of an employee was an issue.”
Stack closed his testimony by apologising to victims “from the bottom of my heart”, with the caveat that it was “extremely difficult to detect a serial paedophile”.
“We’re ashamed of what happened to all the victims and I want to apologise to them again in front of this royal commission,” he said.
“We still struggle to come to terms with how it could have happened. But it was important [that victims came forward] so that a dark chapter in the school’s history was disclosed.”
Howell repeatedly denied any awareness of abuse allegations against Lynch until his death in 2011.
An alleged victim known only as BQP told the school in 2000 that he explained to Howell in 1979 or 1980 in “rather explicit detail” about Lynch’s attempts to hypnotise him and then masturbate him in his office. Howell told him he may have been dreaming and promised an investigation but never raised the issue again, BQP said.
Former Brisbane Grammar deputy headmaster David Coote on Thursday told the commission he would have regarded BQP as a credible person.
A retired doctor and father of one victim, told the commission that in 1981 he asked Howell to act on his son’s complaint that Lynch had “interfered with his penis”
Stack said he had no reason to doubt this testimony.
However, Stack told victims during mediation that even if Howell was not to be believed, it remained an “open question” as to what was actually said by BQP and the doctor.
Counsel assisting the commission David Lloyd argued that the school’s denial of liability was in fact “completely unsupportable” if Howell’s denials were discounted.
Stack replied: “Yes, I really can’t take it any further. I was trying to be open about the fact there was conflict of testimony.”
Stack agreed that if their accounts were accepted, Howell’s actions in later promoting Lynch with a pay rise and praising him in writing for his “outstanding service” to Grammar students were “of course” disgraceful.
Stack said he understood “no alarm bells rang at Grammar” until newspaper reports in 2000 that Nigel Parodi, who killed himself after shooting three police, was abused by Lynch.
The hearing continues.
