[ad_1]
A former Dilworth student who was groomed by the school’s reverend in the 1970s says that talking to other boys nearly 40 years later led him to believe there was a “pedophile” at the school.
Neil Harding spoke at the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care in Auckland on Monday.
He said the Rev. Peter Taylor, who was then the chaplain at the Anglican Boys’ School in Epsom, showed a special interest in him when he was 12 years old.
Harding had come from a broken home and was dealing with being abandoned by his father.
READ MORE:
* The Royal Commission said the Catholic Church must stop honoring pedophiles
* Dilworth School: Former students approach the Royal Commission on Abuse
* The horrors of childhood are exposed when survivors speak of sexual abuse
In addition to being the school chaplain, Taylor was the choir director. He was also a pilot and had taken Harding flying twice.
Harding said the reverend’s attention was special at a school like Dilworth, which he described as a “tough military-style establishment.”
He said that children who did not comply were brutally punished. They were often referred to by their student numbers and not their names, he said.
The staff administered regular beatings and there were “night raids” by the seniors, who invaded their dorm at night and beat the younger students on their beds.
Harding recalled in his sophomore year studying William Golding’s classic Lord of the Flies.
“I don’t think any of us have overlooked irony and each of us believed himself to be ‘Piggy.’
He said the novel summed up his experiences at Dilworth.
“There seemed to be an absence of supervisory personnel and it was a violent physical assault without limits with the rules invented by the older children … The only difference [to Lord of the Flies] It was, we also had to deal with the depredation of the staff. ”
Harding sang in the school choir and was once invited by Taylor to his home on the school grounds, he said.
While there, Taylor put her hand on her thigh and began to move her hand up her leg, she said.
Harding said he removed Taylor’s hand, jumped to his feet and ran out of the house.
“The culture of the school was to stand up and shut up. He was conditioned not to say anything to anyone. “
He said the effects of the “breach of trust” were long-lasting and left him feeling abandoned.
Later, Harding left Dilworth, but said he knew another student, three years older than him, who was also sexually abused by Taylor.
“I have been informed that he told the school at the time and they never believed me. I know his mother and his brother who are very clear about what happened here.
“Apparently the school [was] quick to close this and sweep it under the rug. “
Harding said the man died in a car accident about 10 years ago, but had it not been for his untimely death, he would also be testifying at the commission.
In 1997, Harding approached police, but the detective was not interested in what he had to say and did not take a statement, he said.
However, the officer looked at Taylor and confirmed that the reverend was a convicted pedophile, Harding said.
Harding also reached out to the school trust board in 2018 and encouraged it to rewrite the school’s child protection policy, he said.
“I asked why, even after Reverend Peter Taylor was identified as a pedophile, fired, and subsequently convicted, no member of Dilworth, senior management or the board of trustees had approached me regarding whether something had happened to me, to despite being closely related to him at the time I was at Dilworth. ”
He told the board that it would only be a matter of time before other survivors came forward and that a redress system needed to be put in place.
In the run-up to Dilworth’s centennial, he met up with other older guys who made some “surprising revelations,” he said.
“This new information gave missing pieces to the puzzle that suggested collusion by staff and, along with other confidential information, the possible existence of a pedophile ring.”
