2 weeks Ago By Noel Towell
Private security guards have been hired to protect children as they sleep at a prestigious Victorian private school where senior students stand accused of abusing younger schoolmates in a “strapping” scandal. Families of children boarding at Ballarat Grammar were told last week that the guards would be in the two boys’ boarding houses at the school overnight and that the communal residential areas would also now be covered by security cameras. Ballarat Grammar principal Adam Heath said at least 10 current senior students had a “perverse sense of justice”.
Credit: Joe Armao Ten senior boarders at the school were sent home last month over claims that junior students, some as young as year-7 level, had been assaulted as part of a hazing culture going back decades at the school, known as strapping, with as many as 12 alleged victims involved. The boys have not returned to school and police continue to investigate the accusations of assault at the school’s Dart boarding house, while the school’s own investigation, conducted with the help of employment law barrister Alexander Thomas, continues. The Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority (VRQA), the state’s education and training regulator which also manages the registration and review of independent schools, has confirmed that it also was looking into the claims.
School families were told of the cameras last week and assured that while the surveillance equipment would not be actively monitored, footage would be available to investigators in the aftermath of alleged incidents at the dorm houses. Parents were also told by email that the school had obtained legal advice on the use of the cameras and that they would be confined to common areas of the dorm houses and not installed in sleeping areas or bathrooms. The school also said that private security would be on duty in the boarding houses between 11pm and 7am, in a break with tradition at the school which traces its history back the 19th century and where boarders have in the past been left to supervise themselves overnight.
The school did not respond on Wednesday to a request for comment. Numerous men have told The Age that they had been assaulted or hazed as children as part of a strapping culture among Grammar boarders going back at least to the 1950s. The school is facing legal action from a former boarder, claiming “physical, sexual and psychological” abuse he suffered from fellow students left him mentally scarred and battling drug and alcohol problems.
The father of a boy who was removed from the school by his family two years ago after an assault by a fellow student left him with a third-degree burn told The Age on Wednesday that the new security measures were “long overdue”. “Given the alleged long-term existence of the culture of strapping, it would appear long overdue, and obviously far too late for some, including my son,” the father, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said. A police spokesperson said the force’s investigation was ongoing.
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