As a Knox boarder myself from 1973 to 1978 – and one of the “monitors” responsible for looking after 10- and 11-year-olds in the boarding house in 1976 – all the terms and names in these alleged cases of abuse are as familiar to me as the allegations are appalling. And none more than the allegations from 1975.

I have previously written how, in my whole time at Knox, I was aware of only one allegation of a teacher being involved in sexual abuse. That boarding master, Don Hancock, was gone within 18 hours of the allegation being made, never to be seen again. (Hancock subsequently became an abuser in Thailand, where he finally took his life, in 2006.)

Journalist Peter FitzSimons, left, and Knox Grammar principal Dr Ian Paterson, right. Credit:

Obviously, he should have been immediately reported to the police.

But what I still don’t understand, all these years on, is how the man I knew as Dr Paterson – a severe but very proper man, whose word was law in the school, who set high standards and insisted on them being reached or risk facing the consequences – could have presided over the appalling and deeply damaging culture that emerged in toxic pockets.