Derryn Hinch (Victoria, Derryn Hinch's Justice Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to talk about a God-fearing college in sunny Queensland. It boasts on its website that it provides a 'Christ centred education' through a 'dynamic and transparent Christian faith'. One of its values is to 'care for and respect all members of our community'. The school is Redlands College, in Brisbane's Wellington Point.

One of the community members whom the principal and board of Redlands have been showing care and respect for is convicted paedophile Jonathan Sims. He was a year 2 teacher at Redlands who groomed a young male student and sexually abused him for several years. When police were alerted—Sims was charged last year—the popular teacher took long service leave. It seems the Church of Christ school was very happy for parents and students to believe then that he was on leave and to believe it now, even though Jonathan Sims was spending that long service leave behind bars, in jail. I guess that is where the care and respect kicks in, even for a child molesting teacher—the ultimate betrayer of trust.

It is true that the school board did write to the Queensland College of Teachers to have his teaching licence suspended, which did happen. But when a concerned parent wrote to the school principal to confirm the story and to ask whether there had been a cover-up of what had been going on, he received a series of letters from the school board chairman, Jamie Ware. The parent was worried that Sim, who will be released from prison early next year and, I am told, plans to return to the Moreton Bay area to live, is still regarded fondly by lots of the students. Maybe that is because many of them still do not know why Sims, their teacher, went away, why he went on long service leave and why it seems the school was keen to perpetuate that idea. Maybe they did not want to ruin their image.

My informant tells me that he told the school principal that he planned to tell other parents the truth. So what happened then? Well, the school board chairman, Jamie Ware, warned him to consult a lawyer and then threatened to report him to the privacy commissioner. In his last letter, Ware said:

This latest correspondence (as with your previous communications) is being kept on file for future use by our solicitors should your spurious claims against the board (about a 2015 child protection matter properly addressed by police under criminal laws processes) still persist.

And he said:

The board will no longer respond to your communications.

Surely, if a teacher is charged, convicted and jailed for the prolonged sexual abuse of a student, that school has a duty to inform parents who that teacher is, what he has being doing and why he has taken long service leave, and maybe alert them in case there are other victims as well—and there probably were.

How do you think that victim and his family feel knowing that the teacher is returning to that area after his 'long service leave'? It gives a whole new meaning to 'suffer little children'.