The report centres on Whitehead, a lifelong sex offender who was a volunteer at Puffing Billy from 1961 until 1990. Whitehead died in prison in 2015 after being convicted of sexually abusing six boys. Loading Whitehead was first convicted of a child sex offence in 1959. But he was given his job on the Victorian government railway back after being released from jail in 1960. Ms Glass found he used his status as a government train controller to groom boys. She said, “we do not and will never know how many he abused”.

Ms Glass said the victims of sexual abuse at Puffing Billy were owed a public apology. “The action and inaction of people in authority is inexcusable,” she said. “ Double standards prevailed for decades. Puffing Billy reported minor thefts but not decades of child sex abuse.” Puffing Billy, 1975 Credit:Fairfax Photographic Another paedophile, Anthony John Hutchins, operated at Puffing Billy alongside Whitehead in the 1980s. He was jailed after pleading guilty to 66 offences.

Over 30 years, Whitehead used Puffing Billy to prey on children, including those who attended the railway’s overnight working parties. Some members of the Puffing Billy Board were aware of allegations Whitehead was abusing children but never reported these matters to police or sought to restrict his access to children. Ms Glass said certain board members “failed to act on complaints” and in “one notable case” punished a teen abuse victim by banning him from Puffing Billy. The state government will back all the recommendations of the ombudsman's inquiry. Among these are to set up a victims' support taskforce to help people who have been abused seek redress, and to ensure the new board of the railway introduces child safety standards recommended by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video

John Eren, the Minister for Tourism and Major Events, is understood to have taken a close interest in the scandal since it was first revealed in The Age, viewing it as an opportunity to address past injustices and a systemic governance failure involving the railway. In an emotional press conference on Monday, Mr Eren said Puffing Billy management had ignored repeated ‘‘cries for help’’ by children and their families about the abuse. ‘‘There’s some vindication for the victims and obviously [Whitehead], through his time in prison, has deceased and is hopefully burning in hell,’’ Mr Eren said. Mr Eren accepted Ms Glass’ recommendation he issue a public apology to children abused while involved with Puffing Billy, and said it would take place following private apologies. ‘‘Over decades, Puffing Billy railway protected pedophiles and chose to ignore allegations of sexual assault against children,’’ he said.

Mr Eren said the entire Emerald Tourism Railway Board and Puffing Billy chief executive had resigned, with an interim group installed. Speaking alongside Mr Eren, the acting interim chair of Puffing Billy, Jennifer Fleming, said the organisation would also issue a formal apology to victims. The case is a stark example of how multiple cases of sexual abuse could occur inside a government entity with limited or no intervention, effectively providing impunity to offenders. The child sex abuse epidemic was revealed in The Age in 2015 after the newspaper was contacted by victim Wayne Clarke. The victim's story

Clarke’s story of abuse and survival is harrowing. On Australia Day weekend in 1974, Clarke, then an 11-year-old, visited Melbourne's Spencer Street station to look at a historic rail carriage. He left having given his name and address to a 43-year-old man. It would be four decades before Clarke would be able to bring himself to walk into Cheltenham police station to tell officers what happened next. Wayne Clarke who was abused by Robert Whitehead when he was 13 years old. Credit:Simon O'Dwyer Like countless boys the world over, Clarke loved trains. He had travelled alone from his home in Mentone just to see an 1899 rail carriage known as the 30AV. Purpose-built by the Victorian railways, it had a curved wooden roof and ornate wooden window shutters. It was a beauty. As Clarke studied the carriage, he was approached by its owner, a powerfully built man who was a senior railways officer and a leading member of the Puffing Billy service. His name was Robert Kingsley Whitehead. Loading

The pair talked about their infatuation with trains. Whitehead asked the boy to give him his address and telephone number so he could send him some special train articles. Clarke went home excited at having met a man he aspired to be like. But it was the beginning of a nightmare that many other children would also endure. Clarke is one of a band of now middle-aged men who had their childhoods ruined by predators including Whitehead who throughout the 1960s, '70s and '80s operated often with impunity within Victoria's government and historic railways, including the iconic Puffing Billy. At least four other men volunteering at Puffing Billy or at the Australian Historical Rail Society in North Williamstown have been convicted for child sex offences over the past 30 years. Other abusers were never caught and have died. Some are living as free men. For far too long, Whitehead was too, until he was finally jailed in 2015 for decades of abuse involving six children. The predator Whitehead presented as charming and harmless. Born in 1931, he grew up in Melbourne's sandbelt suburb of Cheltenham. His father, Ken, was secretary of the Cheltenham Golf Club. His mother, Margaret, was from a prominent local family. Young Robert was a boy scout. Comfortable rather than wealthy, the family stood out mainly because of where they lived – a historic homestead in Charman Road that Margaret had inherited, along with some family connections that some observers would later speculate helped their son stay out of trouble.

The property endowed Whitehead with an aura of grandeur that he further extended by telling people that he was schooled at the exclusive Mentone Grammar. Actually, he went to the local state secondary school. Perhaps we can read something into that small lie – a habit of pretending to be someone other than who he was. Or not. Children embellish the truth, or they do sometimes – it was a truism that Whitehead himself would exploit to devastating effect as an adult. But there is little in his childhood to seize on for those of us looking for clues – unless it was the house itself, which was known as Ulupna​, and which back in the 19th century had been a lunatic asylum. After leaving school, Whitehead brought his boyhood loves of trains and the scouts into adulthood. He rose through the ranks to become a Scoutmaster. He started in the Victorian government railways as a 17-year-old and by his mid-20s, he was working as a stationmaster. Outside his day job, most of his time was spent as a volunteer at Puffing Billy – the steam train in the Dandenongs beloved by generations of Victorian children – and the rail society in North Williamstown. He would have long associations with both, and later would also spend several years at the Seymour Railway Heritage Centre. Back in the mid-'70s however his haunt was the disused Taradale rail station near Bendigo, which he and a few friends leased from the state. Whitehead was in no rush to build his friendship with the young Wayne Clarke. Sometimes he would drop in to the boy's home where he impressed his parents with his charm and respectability. The boy and the man would go out for the odd day trip and train rides. Then, on October 18, 1975, everything changed. Clarke remembers the telephone at his house ringing at 6pm. It was Whitehead. He wanted to know if Clarke would join him that night for an overnight stay at Taradale. By 7.30pm, Clarke was in the car with Whitehead, heading north. And it was here that he felt his first moment of unease. They were passing through Moorabbin when Whitehead made a strange comment. "He said, 'By the way, everyone who goes to Taradale has a nude initiation'," Clarke recalls. He had never heard Whitehead speak like this before. He hoped it was a bad joke. It was late when they arrived at the old station. They got out of the car and trudged toward the old stone building. Whitehead unlocked the wooden door and ushered the boy inside. Clarke remembers feeling his temperature drop as he entered the building. The momentary quiet was interrupted by the door locking behind him. Then Whitehead spoke. His voice was different. More a bark: "Take your clothes off." Clarke had just turned 13. He did as he was told.

"I froze. I was terrified," Clarke, now 52, remembers. Years of abuse How often did Robert Whitehead slip between the cracks? How many times could he have been stopped? Towards the end of 1959, when he was 28, Whitehead disappeared for seven months. He would later tell people he had gone to Darwin. In fact, he was in Melbourne's Pentridge Prison. Some months before, the urges that Whitehead would much later tell police had been building inside him since his schooldays, had surfaced. He had abducted the son of a policeman from a Scout hall and molested him. He was found guilty on November 2, 1959, and sentenced to 18 months in Pentridge Prison. He was released on parole seven months later. Scouts Victoria took swift action, forcing him out and writing to their affiliate bodies across Australia to warn them never to allow him near children. A letter dated February 25, 1960, from Scouts Victoria to Supreme Court judge Trevor Rapke​, indicates it was the judge who specifically requested steps be taken to ensure Whitehead "did not come into contact with boys in future". Somehow, however, Whitehead was welcomed back into his government job at the railways and would progress to become a controller at Spencer Street station in Melbourne's CBD. It was a job that would give him great authority in the railway fraternity – and unimpeded access to children.

Extraordinarily, Victoria's railway department deemed it appropriate for Whitehead to return to a prestigious job that would bring him into regular contact with children. Through their actions- or inaction- certain officials afforded Whitehead protection over the years when complaints about him were periodically raised. Whitehead abused Clarke at a disused railway station. He preyed on others, too. More victims Nineteen ninety-seven. A V/Line train to Seymour. The train's conductor is a young man called Bill. As he passes through one of the carriages, he sees the familiar burly frame of a man sitting comfortably as the train rolls through open country. Their eyes meet. "He knew who I was," Bill recalls. "I watched him like a hawk and thought, 'If you go near a kid on my carriage I'll kill you'." Bill, who has asked for his surname not to be published, was 12 when he first met Whitehead. It was on the Puffing Billy line in the mid-1980s. "I just loved railways at the time." Bill, now 48, says he was abused by Whitehead and a colleague called Anthony John Hutchins while at Puffing Billy. He says both men warned him no one would believe him if he spoke out.

But unlike Clarke, Bill did speak out. He told his parents. In 1986, Bill's parents were among a small group to contact police, alleging that Whitehead and Hutchins had abused their children at Puffing Billy. Hutchins fell to pieces. He confessed and was convicted of 66 sex charges against children. But Whitehead was cool – or clever. He didn't sweat, let alone confess. For years, he was able to persuade his doubters and confound his victims. By the 2000s, the state government and various local councils were even using him as an expert historian to promote tourist railways. Bill, who went on to work for V/Line himself, recalls that he was once threatened with losing his job after referring to Whitehead as "paedophile Bob" in front of a V/Line manager. Whitehead seemed to be untouchable. Bill meanwhile coped by drinking. Once he tried to kill himself. Bill and his mother Alice remain staggered that Whitehead escaped charges in 1986. "Whitehead must have had friends in high places," Alice said in an interview in 2015. The ombudsman’s report has confirmed that Whitehead's tale encapsulates a gross failure by successive state governments and Victoria's close-knit railway fraternity to protect vulnerable children. If only steps had been taken to exile Whitehead from Victoria's railway movement upon his first conviction, Clarke and at least five other boys would have been spared the abuse that has scarred their lives. If only people had acted on what was known as far back as 1959, the story of Robert Kingsley Whitehead would hardly be worth telling.

In an interview in 2015, the chief executive of Puffing Billy, John Robinson, says it was only in 1990 that management became aware of an "unconfirmed allegation" of abuse against Whitehead by an unknown victim. He says Whitehead was questioned and denied the claim. But management immediately revoked his volunteer status and cancelled his membership. Similarly he says, the organisation ejected Hutchins in 1986 after parents complained and he confessed. "In both cases from my knowledge I can categorically deny the allegation that management was aware of allegations against either man and took no action. In both cases, management took immediate and firm action," Robinson says. The victims have disputed this and in her report, ombudsman Deborah Glass said that Mr Robinson’s position as chief executive should be reviewed. The survivor

Today, Clarke lives with his partner and two stepchildren. He says he is happy but acknowledges that Whitehead's abuse has affected his life in many ways. He is less trusting, more wary. His secret affected past relationships. He felt unable to confide. He struggled with keeping what happened from his mother, afraid she would blame herself. It was not until a few weeks after he had walked into Cheltenham police station in July 2014 to report to police what had happened all those years before, that Clarke finally told her the whole story of what happened on that night in 1975 when he went away with the railway man. Clarke had spent the previous two days giving his statement to detective Nova Graham when he called in to see his mother. He was drained. "We were sitting together and she asked me if I was OK," Clarke says. Then she asked him the question she had been holding close to her all those years: 'Was it that man I let you go away with? I've always worried that something might have happened to you that night.'" Whitehead’s jailing is all down to Clarke. But Rolf Harris helped. It was the hubris of the disgraced entertainer in the face of his own sexual abuse charges that prompted Clarke to go to the police. There had been other times when he came close. Other public figures. Other disclosures. But something inside kept holding him back. Until Harris. As details of Harris' brazen predation of his young fans continued to emerge, Clarke was overcome with disgust, not only at the entertainer, but at a society that had seemingly turned a blind eye. It was time. "I knew I wouldn't be Whitehead's only victim," he previously told The Age. On Monday morning, the ombudsman singled out Clarke for praise. His bravery, Ms Glass said, had allowed the full horrors of the scandal to be finally revealed.