Caring Private School Plays 'Blame the Victim'

Update: Richard Ackland in Sydney Morning Herald (3 Dec) writes here about the same subject.

Private schools do a lot to project their image. Impeccable sandstone buildings, immaculately kept grounds, and strict control of their public image is the norm. A private school's image is what it sells, and administrations do a lot to avoid public scandal.

Having experienced private school reputation paranoia first hand, I was surprised to see the Tara Anglican School for Girls (Sydney) allowing itself to be dragged into court by a pupil's family, who were suing for breach of care that allegedly resulted in the rape of their daughter while on an excursion in Italy.

They were on a hiding to nothing. It's hard to think what the school had to gain by letting it go to court.

To make matters worse, their legal team played the 'Blame the Victim' defence.

.... the defence counsel, Ian Harrison, SC, .... put to the teenager that "in order to avoid being criticised or getting into trouble you concocted the story that you had been raped".

He said she was seen by friends "happy and pleased with herself", riding on the back of a moped - she claimed she was grabbed by men on motorbikes and taken to an alley in the village of Sorrento, where she was attacked.

She also denied his suggestion that she had put a backpack on her front the following day and "made a joke, saying 'I'm pregnant"'.

He said that she had told a parent, Joseph Grassi, also a solicitor, that she had "led the boys on, flirted and encouraged them".

She denied this.

I find it incredible that in this day and age that the 'blame the victim' defence still happens. I thought that the court procedures had changed to prevent this sort of thing.

Was the school's defence team suggesting it was the victim's fault she was raped because she looked happy before the event?

If that wasn't low enough, they unknowingly photographed her while she was out.

Cross-examining the teenager, Ian Harrison, QC, showed her a series of photographs, including one that he said showed her apparently "relaxed" while "in a public place". Questioning her claim that the rape had left her with low self-esteem, he said that "to sit on a bar stool ... with a skirt as short as that takes a lot of confidence".

"You weren't embarrassed by the attention it might attract?"

So, because the girl was raped some time before (she was 15 when it happened) she can never again go out? Dress like her peers? Have a drink in a bar? In other words, never try to restart her life?

Then there was the treatment she received from the teachers who were escorting the students in Italy, and from the school when she got home.

She told the court yesterday that when her teachers took her to the airport to be sent home to Sydney early as punishment for breaking curfew, they billed her for the morning-after pill and taxi fares.

Once back in Sydney, her school principal, Carol Bowern - who sat in the back row of the court yesterday taking notes - refused to acknowledge that she had been raped, she said.

"I started to tell her the truth, of what had happened, and when I got up to the point where I said I had been pinned down on the bonnet, she stopped me ... from then on she continued to talk about how I must apologise to the teachers for what I had done on the trip," she said.

"She asked me to write out a statement saying that I wasn't going to return to the school any more and that I was still welcome to be a Tara old girl."

She said Mrs Bowern arranged for her to sit her final exams in a room alone. She never returned to the school.

I'm sure the offer that she could remain a 'Tara old girl' made up for the shoddy way she was treated.

The court case was abruptly halted when the parties settled out of court. I'd like to think the school caved in to prevent any more damage to the victim, but I suspect that the motive was to prevent more damage to the school's reputation.

I hope the payout was a big one.

I'm glad I'm not sending my kids to such a caring school. I imagine a lot of other parents who may have been considering it would be having second thoughts.