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Furness focused on the crimes of Ballarat brothers Gerald Leo Fitzgerald, who was forced to resign from teaching and has since died, and Ted Dowlan, who was eventually jailed for offences against 31 boys. The stories you need to read, in one handy email Read more
The boys who were abused by brothers Fitzgerald and Dowlan were referred to by other students as their “bum buddies”, the commission heard. Pell said he had never heard that term.
Pell said he was made aware Fitzgerald had swum naked with boy students.
“I had heard, at the break-up at the end of the year, they did swim naked.”
It was, Pell, said, common knowledge that the swimming incident had occurred. Pell said the incident was unusual, and an “imprudent” act but “no improprieties were ever alleged to me”.
It was put to Pell that Dowlan’s offending was also “common knowledge”, was also the subject of complaints by parents, and gossiping amongst students, who “sniggered” the brother was “touching the boys again”.
Pell said he only heard “fleeting rumours” to “misbehaviour by Dowlan which I concluded might have been paedophilic activity”.
He agreed that sexual offending at the school’s was known to a “significant number” of people in the community.
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