Jadison Ridgeway, Herbie Morcombe deaths near Harrington crash: latest
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The mum of one of the men discovered dead near a mysterious motorbike crash site on the Mid-North Coast has opened up on her theories about the deaths, and revealed the heartbreaking moment she learned they had been found.
The Harrington deaths of cousins Herbert (Herbie) Morcombe and Jadison Ridgeway in August last year has been the subject of much speculation in the community of Taree – with questions whether they were chased in the lead up to the accident or possible victims of foul play.
But authorities have closed the case, with The Daily Telegraph revealing in an exclusive last week that the matter will not be subject to an inquest, or any further investigation.
Jadison's mother Alanie James said her son, if still alive, would have been celebrating his 21st birthday next month.
She is the first to admit he had fallen foul of the law and the crashed bike was in fact stolen.
The roadside memorial for Jadison Ridgeway and (at right) Jadison with his mother Alanie James.
'I was just waiting for him to find himself,' she tearfully told this publication.
He had his 'partying habits' but was also a loving father to a baby girl, she said on Monday.
Police at the scene of the crash last year along Harrington Road about 11km from Harrington. Picture: Janine Watson
She also maintains a steadfast belief that the pair were being pursued.
'I am thinking they were chased,' she said.
Herbert and Jadison were last seen leaving a home on Dunoon St, Taree about 3.30am on Friday, August 16 last year.
Family and friends became worried and told police the disappearance was out of character.
Herbert 'Herbie' Morcombe and his partner Kuliyah Simon.
On August 20, the police were notified and two days later officers made a public appeal for information.
Ms James joined the search for the pair in Taree, door knocking around various neighbourhoods.
When, on August 26, she heard bodies had been located along Harrington Road not far from the Pacific Highway exit, family members drove her there.
The roadside memorial for the two men - not far from highway turn off to Harrington. Picture: Janine Watson
'There was a woman police officer there and she took my hand and walked me over there and I collapsed. I was off tap, banging my head on the ground.'
But she said after the 'big heads' got involved she was told to get off the road and she said it has been a strained relationship with police ever since.
The bodies of missing Taree men Herbert Morcombe, 21, and Jadison Ridgeway, 20 were found on Monday, August 26 last year, near a crashed motorbike on Harrington Road.
Emergency services at work at the Harrington crash scene in August last year. Picture: Janine Watson.
Police determined the motorbike they were on lost control on a corner and smashed into trees. The NSW Coroner's Court has confirmed it will not be pursuing the matter.
Ms James said that unlike the police in the Karuah and Newcastle area where she lives, Taree police 'haven't been involved with the community enough'.
Jadison with his mother at Saltwater Reserve near Taree.
'Here police play footy with the kids and they (the kids) get to know them as adults not just police.
'In Taree they are 300 years behind.'
Ms James said she was not surprised the case had been closed on the young men's deaths.
'I knew we would be put on the backburner.'
Got a news tip? Email: janine.watson@news.com.au
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ABC News
34 minutes ago
- ABC News
Melbourne lawyer fled Australia with $1.2m after filing for bankruptcy, court case alleges
What do you do if the bank accidentally sends you more than $1 million? A court has heard this happened to former lawyer Chaim Geron, who's accused of quickly transferring the money offshore, declaring bankruptcy and leaving the country under a false name. What followed was an international pursuit by the person charged with handling Mr Geron's bankruptcy, in a bid to have it recognised in Israel — a move which could allow any of Mr Geron's assets to be used to pay any Australian debts. The former lawyer has now asked to have the bankruptcy set aside in the Federal Circuit Court, where the allegations against him have been detailed in a series of filings by his bankruptcy trustee. According to court documents, the ANZ bank made its million-dollar error in June 2019, when Mr Geron had recently broken up with his wife. At around the same time, he was also embroiled in a disciplinary dispute with the legal regulator that later saw him suspended from practising law over findings of misconduct in relation to his dealings with an elderly client. "Following the breakdown of my marriage and after one year of legal proceedings I ended up losing everything I had, including my practice and any savings and decided to relocate to Israel where I was born and bred and have a family," Mr Geron said in an affidavit. He held the family home in the Melbourne suburb of Elsternwick in his name, but it was mortgaged to ANZ and he owed the bank $1.5 million. He sold the property, but about $1.2 million — which should have been paid to the bank — ended up in the trust account of Mr Geron's lawyers. According to a lawyer for his bankruptcy trustee, Innis Cull from accounting firm PKR, the money was instead moved offshore into a company named Hilazon, "a Hebrew word which translates to 'shelled creature' or 'snail'." "Mr Geron refused to return the money, and instead transferred the funds overseas to bank accounts in Israel, and subsequently to his brother and a company he controlled, Hilazon Inc," Mr Cull's lawyer said in an affidavit filed with the court. Mr Geron denies Mr Cull's version of events. "This is not true," he told the ABC. "I paid debts and Mr Cull has all the information." Mr Geron declared himself bankrupt in 2021, two years after the ANZ transaction, and at a time when the COVID pandemic meant there was no easy way to get back to Australia. In his affidavit, Mr Geron told the court that his bankruptcy was motivated by ANZ suing him over the home loan payment. He told the court that, after realising he needed an Australian address to declare bankruptcy, he asked an acquaintance to sign a lease that was backdated by several months — something Mr Cull's lawyer alleges in a court document amounts to "fraud". Mr Geron provided Mr Cull with a copy of the lease showing he was renting a room in Elsternwick. The bankruptcy went through and there things sat until October 2022, when Mr Geron told Mr Cull he wanted to visit Australia. Within weeks of his return to Australia, Mr Cull ordered Mr Geron to come to his office in Melbourne and face questions about his affairs. By that stage, Mr Cull had appointed a lawyer to comb through Israeli records and identify any assets Mr Geron held there, court documents show. The search turned up an apartment in Mr Geron's name, held without a mortgage, in Rishon LeZion, about 8 kilometres south of Tel Aviv, along with up to four current or former Israeli bank accounts. Mr Cull also began proceedings in Israel to have the Australian bankruptcy recognised over there — the first step towards seizing control of any Israeli assets held by Mr Geron. The court heard that during his January 12, 2023, meeting with Mr Cull, Mr Geron confirmed his address in Australia was the place he rented from his friend and denied having multiple bank accounts. Mr Geron also "claimed that whilst in Israel, he was staying with his mother, or in short-term rented accommodation for which there was no lease agreement," according to court documents. Asked about whether he held the property and bank accounts, and failed to declare them to Mr Cull, Mr Geron told the ABC: "This is not true at all." On the morning after they met, Mr Cull wrote to Mr Geron and used his power, as his bankruptcy trustee, to ban him from leaving Australia. Mr Geron also informed Australian Federal Police (AFP) of the decision. Mr Geron wrote back to say that he "answered your questions in full" at the interview. Later that day, at around 12.20pm, the AFP called Mr Cull's office to say Mr Geron had tried to leave the country, but had been stopped. According to Australian Border Force (ABF), Mr Geron left the country on January 15, 2023, three days after his interview with Mr Cull, using a New Zealand passport in the name of Shane Green. "Unfortunately he has departed Australia without triggering any alert as he used an alias," an ABF officer told Mr Cull in an email tendered to the court. Authorities also told Mr Cull they would update their records to show Mr Geron and Mr Green are the same person. Mr Geron provided the ABC with an extract of official movement records, dated last month, "showing that [I] entered and exited Australia legally under my name". "I emphasise that no criminal actions were ever taken against me for using [a] 'false passport,'" he said. Mr Geron turned up again in February last year, when he filed a response to Mr Cull's Israeli proceedings that court documents say was witnessed before the "consul at the Israeli consulate in Panama City, Panama". Court documents show that until December last year, Mr Geron told the Israeli court he lived in Australia. "I deny court [sic] in Israel have jurisdiction in respect of my matter, since I am an Australian citizen and the correct forum to deal with any issue in respect of myself is in Australia," Mr Geron said in one document, filed with the Israeli court in February last year. "I attach a tax invoice issued to me a few days ago involving a purchase of a car in Australia in my name and bearing my address." The invoice shows the car was a $1,625 Mazda with no plates, sold as a write-off by auctioneers Pickles. More recently, Mr Geron has used his Israeli address in correspondence with the court there. Mr Geron told the ABC that the law required a person to be physically present in Australia in order to file for bankruptcy. He has been seeking to have the bankruptcy set aside on the grounds the required Australian connection never really existed, and has said in court documents that he really lives in Israel and hasn't lived in Australia since April 2019. Mr Cull opposes Mr Geron's attempt to annul the bankruptcy. Mr Geron said courts have previously annulled bankruptcies based on the residency test. Last month, Federal Circuit Court judge Simone Bingham made orders that Mr Geron appear in person at a hearing set down for July 2. "There will be no dispensation to have an online hearing in this case — it is a matter of credit," she said during a brief hearing on May 29. She agreed with counsel for Mr Cull that there were "serious matters" that needed to be examined, including "escaping the jurisdiction" by using a New Zealand passport under a different name. But Mr Geron told the ABC that he's concerned that the financial burden of hiring a lawyer and potentially having to provide security to cover legal costs "will not allow [me] to expose the truth". The case continues.
ABC News
an hour ago
- ABC News
An online casino banned in Australia is streamed live from Melbourne
Four young men are locked in a makeshift prison cell at an undisclosed Melbourne location. Under the watchful eye of several security cameras, the inmates attempt to regain their freedom in an unusual way: by spinning slots on an online casino. It is all part of an online game show run by Shuffle — an Australian-run online casino that is banned in its own backyard. Shuffle accepts cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin to place bets, bypassing banks and other institutions that could provide oversight and transparency to its operations. Under Australian law, online casinos are required to block Australian users from accessing their services. And yet key executives at Shuffle are gambling on the company's own live broadcasts, plainly located in Australia as they do so. Ishan Haque has been central in the casino's marketing efforts, which have included recruiting an army of what he calls "micro-influencers". He was one of the four men locked in the fake prison cell: his three co-conspirators were all gambling streamers based in the US who had flown to Melbourne to take part in the stunt. When not participating in special events, the casino's affiliated streamers broadcast themselves gambling from their bedrooms and, in some cases, purpose-built studios. They ride the highs and lows, yelling over the microphone as they win and lose. Some regularly complain that they can not afford to pay rent and beg their audience for more money to gamble with. "They might have 9,000 followers," Haque explained in a rare podcast appearance with gambling investor Tom Waterhouse, "but they're highly engaging in the community". As affiliates of the casino, these streamers are entitled to a cut of the money lost by players they have referred to Shuffle. This sets up a complicated dynamic: the more their fans lose, the more the streamers stand to gain. Mark R Johnson, a gaming culture researcher at the University of Sydney, has watched dozens of hours of gambling live streams across various online casinos. Many streamers demonstrate signs of disordered thinking around gambling, says Dr Johnson, as do the viewers commenting in their live chatrooms. "From an ethical perspective, it's sad to watch these harmful ideas be perpetuated and go unchallenged," he told the ABC. The affiliate relationships offered by online casinos — and the promotion of gambling they represent — have created a "paradigm shift" in live streaming culture, he said. It is no longer a community focused on the shared love of a game: there is now money to be extracted from one's fans. It was Shuffle's much larger Australian-owned competitor, Stake, that brought this form of influencer marketing into the mainstream, signing some of the world's popular streamers to multi-million-dollar deals. Contact Julian Fell at tips@ if you have any information about crypto casinos in Australia. Most Friday afternoons, Haque is at Shuffle headquarters in Melbourne's CBD, hosting the company's weekly lottery. The young entrepreneur wears a black suit and purple tie, and engages in constant patter throughout the broadcast. On a recent week, the jackpot was around $3.8 million — a sign of the casino's growing popularity. Shuffle is accepting around $2 billion worth of deposits each month, according to analytics service Tanzanite. This puts Shuffle among the top five "crypto casinos" globally, just two years after its launch. The largest, Stake, processes roughly as many bets as Ladbrokes' global parent company Entain. All this success comes despite the bans on Shuffle and Stake across some of the world's largest online gambling markets: Australia, the US and the UK. "Due to licensing restrictions, we cannot accept players from Australia," visitors are informed when trying to access the site from a blocked region. "If you're using a VPN, please disable it and try again." It is a handy hint — a quick Google search of "VPN" returns pages and pages of results offering the exact product needed to bypass Shuffle's geo-blocker. Many of them are free. By providing a random address in Tokyo, the ABC was able to "verify" its account, instructed to make a deposit in crypto, and even given the option to buy it directly on the site with a credit card (Australian cards are not accepted). There was no proof of residence or identity needed. On the live stream, Haque interacts with viewers in the chat room, wiling away the time until the lottery is to be drawn. Part of the patter involves spinning the slots and giving away the winnings to those watching. All of this is happening from the Shuffle office in Australia, where the service is supposed to be banned. When asked about this practice, Australia's media regulator, ACMA, said it knew of the company but was not aware of its affiliates using its products in Australia. "We will seek additional information from Shuffle about this," said an ACMA spokesperson. Many players around the world have found ways around Shuffle's processes for checking identities and locations. The three streamers who were invited to Melbourne for Shuffle's fake prison game show were all based in the US, where online "crypto casinos" are also banned. Another prominent Shuffle promoter was a 19-year-old Texan resident, who was later charged with hacking and fraud offences in the US. Before his alleged crimes came to light, he was a well-known Shuffle affiliate who often exchanged friendly banter with Shuffle's staff on social media, including co-founder Noah Dummett. There is no suggestion that Shuffle knew about this affiliate's alleged criminality while he was partnered with the casino. Yet another of the casino's former partners was in close contact with Shuffle's owners. In private messages seen by the ABC, she told co-founder Dummett all sorts of things about herself, including her location in Nebraska, while she was gambling on the platform and referring users to it. Properly regulated casinos — both online and offline — are covered by strict anti-money laundering laws, requiring them to "know your customer" when funds are transferred in and out of their accounts. In a public forum post, Dummett claimed the affiliate had used multiple forged ID documents and was therefore banned on the site. "I was not aware of her United States residence," he wrote. "I would've closed her account sooner if I had proof of this." Shuffle and its owners did not respond to multiple requests for comment. While Shuffle is headquartered in a Melbourne skyscraper, it is licensed on the gambling-friendly Caribbean island of Curaçao through a separate business entity. The former Dutch colony offers a favourable tax system to online businesses. Since 2020, businesses in Curaçao pay no tax on income derived from overseas customers — for an online casino, that is almost all of it. Shuffle is registered at an unassuming house on a gravel road in the capital of Willemstad, an address it shares with at least one other well-known online casino. The global nature of these operations makes it difficult for regulators to deal with them. A casino could be operated out of Australia, serve Japanese customers and hold a Curaçao gaming licence — not to mention the streamers promoting them from other parts of the globe. Several online casinos registered in Curaçao have been issued warnings by Australia's media regulator, ACMA, for illegally targeting Australians. Many have had their sites blocked by Australian internet providers at ACMA's request, though usually these do not have geoblocking features and even explicitly advertise to Australian customers. But there are calls for the regulator to go further. In a 2023 report titled You Win Some, You Lose More, a parliamentary committee handed down several recommendations about how to reduce the harms associated with online gambling. The committee recommended blocking transactions to illegal gambling operators, and "stronger sanctions for companies and known individuals who profit from illegal gambling". It also called for better collaboration with overseas regulators, especially in places like Curaçao where illegal sites proliferate. Two years on, little appears to have changed. Australians own and operate three of the world's largest crypto casinos — two of which have made their owners into billionaires, with Shuffle doing its best to make it three. The Australian government has not yet formally responded to the 2023 report.
ABC News
an hour ago
- ABC News
Victorian education department ignored multiple complaints about 'psychopathic rapist' principal
Warning: This story contains discussions of child sexual abuse and suicide The Victorian Education Department ignored multiple reports of child sexual abuse by a government school principal described by one survivor as a "psychopathic rapist", shuffling the man on to a series of new jobs even after one school banned him from its premises. Documents uncovered by the ABC show multiple allegations of child sexual abuse against former Oakleigh Technical School principal Jack Digney Thomas were not acted on by the department in the mid-1980s, even after the matter was referred to then-education minister Robert Fordham, who was deputy premier at the time in John Cain's Labor government. A series of 1983 letters obtained by the ABC indicate that a complaint about Thomas by a former student, lodged at the Oakleigh electoral office of local Labor MP Race Mathews, was referred first to Fordham and then to the director-general of the Victorian Education Department, Dr Norman Curry. A letter from Fordham on May 18, 1983, stated that Curry had claimed "there would not appear to be any evidence of illegal behaviour which would justify charges being laid", but that Thomas was soon to be interviewed. A subsequent letter on May 20, 1983, from Fordham to Mathews, claims that Curry and the department's "senior legal officer" interviewed both Thomas and the complainant but deemed that the complainant was "able to provide no corroborative evidence". The correspondence suggests the Victorian Education Department took no action against Thomas other than advising him to cease his "improper" correspondence with the complainant. Fordham's May 20 letter concluded: "The Director-General has provided me with a fuller report on the matter which can be made available if you wish." But in response to requests from the ABC, the Victorian Education Department said it no longer retained any reports or documents related to the investigation. Fordham told the ABC he could not recall the incident, nor any particular discussion of sexual abuse in schools during his time as education minister. Mathews and Curry are both deceased. Thomas, who died in 2012, has been described to the ABC by survivors of his alleged grooming and abuse as a rampant paedophile who manipulated, blackmailed and sexually abused male students for decades in schools all over Victoria. One survivor said Thomas's manipulation and abuse would push him "to the precipice of committing suicide at times", and said: "I look back on it now and I don't know how I survived." The ABC has discovered other documents that prove the Victorian Education Department was made further aware of Thomas's abuse of students in April 1986, when two Oakleigh Technical School teachers got themselves elected to the school council with the express intention of ousting Thomas for his abuse of students. One of the teachers told the ABC he was also utilised as an informant in a Victoria Police investigation of Thomas. Another said his frustration had boiled over after a senior officer of the technical teacher's union, to whom he reported Thomas's behaviour, told the teacher that Thomas "was too powerful", and that a senior executive at the Victorian Education Department was "scared" of Thomas due to his political connections. Oakleigh Technical School council meeting minutes obtained by the ABC show that in April 1986, the teachers confronted Thomas with unpaid bills from the nearby Turf Club Hotel and Chadstone's Red Carpet Motor Inn, venues at which, respectively, Thomas was known to groom and sexually abuse boys from the school. The minutes show that Thomas immediately stormed out of the meeting and resigned, citing a "vendetta" by the whistleblower teachers. A motion subsequently passed by the school council, which banned Thomas from re-entering the school's grounds, was immediately communicated to the Victorian Education Department. The motion read: "That the acting executive officer of the school council write a letter demanding the non-return of Mr J.D. Thomas to Oakleigh Technical School based on the grounds of the council's lack of confidence in him. This letter to be addressed to the Regional Director of Education of the South Central Region, W. Bainbridge, and copies be sent to Mr D. Lockhart, Principal Staffing Officer of Post Primary Schools and Mr. J. Betson, officer in charge of Human Resources branch." All three former Victorian Education Department staff who received the communications and attended some of the meetings are now deceased, but two former Oakleigh Technical School staff present at the meetings confirmed their tense atmosphere, the sense of scandal enveloping Thomas and the department's knowledge of the matters raised. No records exist of any disciplinary action being enforced by the department in the wake of the scandal. Department records and the school council minutes indicate that after Thomas's departure, the department advised the Oakleigh Technical School council to communicate to the school community that Thomas was relocating to Ballarat and had been appointed principal of North Ballarat Technical School — the first of a series of "relieving principal" jobs subsequently awarded to Thomas by the department. Thomas was moved by the department to Ballarat Technical School between July 1986 and 19 October 1986, then moved on to the Portland Technical School (20 October 1986 to 31 December 1986), Collingwood Technical School (1987) and Cranbourne Meadows Technical School (1988). In a newspaper article from May 1988, which detailed the decision of the Cranbourne Meadows Technical school council to end Thomas's tenure as relieving principal and replace him with a permanent appointment, Thomas was quoted as saying: "I've decided not to appeal — I'll accept the umpire's decision." The article, headlined Pupils Fight For Sir With Love… detailed an apparent student backlash against Thomas's removal. But several former teachers interviewed by the ABC suggested Thomas's removal came after a staffroom revolt led by a teacher aware of Thomas's past. Department records suggest that Thomas departed the school in October 1988 and retired. A spokesperson for the Victorian Education Department said the department retained no disciplinary records at all for Thomas. The ABC has heard multiple allegations of abuse by Thomas from decades apart and dating back to the 1960s, at the Mildura, Wodonga and Oakleigh Technical Schools. The allegations follow a similar pattern, with Thomas having targeted vulnerable boys, entrapping them with the promise of career opportunities and introductions to his powerful friends in the political world, sending them "love letters" and, in most cases, subjecting them to sexual assaults. One survivor told the ABC that he was raped by Thomas dozens of times in the principal's office of Oakleigh Technical School in the late 1970s and early 1980s, during after-school "appointments" the ABC has confirmed by obtaining Thomas's school diaries and appointment books of the time. The 1970s appointment books also appear to confirm Thomas's boasts to his victims of a close friendship with Victoria's then-premier, Rupert "Dick" Hamer. "Dinner with Dick in the Grand Hall", says one evening entry late in 1978, an apparent reference to Queen's Hall at the Victorian Parliament building on Melbourne's Spring Street. A year earlier, Hamer had been present at the unveiling of the school's $1.1 million horticulture annexe. Thomas's career as a teacher and principal of Victorian Education Department technical schools spanned 38 years, from 1951 to October 1988. For at least 15 years from the late 1960s, Thomas also toured the state giving sex education lectures. One survivor of Thomas's abuse told the ABC he was sometimes taken on Thomas's rural sex education "tours", during which he was sexually assaulted by Thomas at drive-in motels. In a 1981 letter published in The Age, Thomas explained the sex education role, writing: "I am not a humanist, but regard myself as humanitarian." Dozens of former teachers and students associated with Thomas across three decades told the ABC he was a revered educator who seemed to wield enormous power within the education sector, no more so than between 1974 and 1986, when his leadership of the Oakleigh Technical School's standard-setting horticulture program ranked him among the most important principals in the state. "Oakleigh Tech was hailed as a benchmark for blue-collar trades training and apprenticeships," one former student told the ABC. "Thomas fancied himself a trailblazer, constantly lobbying for funding and expansion of the school." On an alumni Facebook page, numerous glowing tributes can be found to Thomas's visionary leadership of the school and positive influence on many students. But it also contains unveiled references to Thomas's alleged sexual abuse of boys and eventual removal from the job. The ABC has discovered that rumours of Thomas's sexual abuse of boys had followed him to Oakleigh from previous postings at regional schools such as Mildura Technical School and Wodonga Technical School. From the latter, Thomas departed under a cloud in 1973. One former staff member who complained to Wodonga police about Thomas was told there was a "thick" file on him, but nothing that could be acted upon. To a later victim of his abuse, Thomas "told me there were some accusations" in Wodonga and that Thomas "had to leave", but boasted of having "got out of the car and pissed on the road, to say 'f*** you lot'" on his final journey out of the town. One former teacher told the ABC that upon Thomas's subsequent arrival at Oakleigh Technical School in 1974, her late husband, a technical teacher's union delegate at Oakleigh Technical School at the time, received a warning from his equivalent at Wodonga Technical School that Thomas would be trouble, and that Wodonga Tech staff were shocked he had immediately landed another principal job. "Garry" (not his real name), a former student at Oakleigh Technical School in the late 1970s and early 1980s, gave the ABC a shocking account of his entrapment and abuse by Jack Thomas across "five years of hell". Garry arrived at Oakleigh Technical School in the late 1970s as an overseas student with no support network, family or friends. Within days of his arrival, he says Thomas seized upon him as a kind of personal project. At first, Garry thought this was a blessing. Thomas arranged a part-time job for him at a nearby Coles supermarket and a place to live — the first of a series of Thomas-engineered lodgings that ensured Garry could always be located by Thomas. "I was in a foreign country. My family could not take me back, and I'd been told education was my only way out of poverty, so it was … Thomas to the rescue," says Garry. "He actually became my legal guardian, if you can believe it." At the beginning of Garry's second year at Oakleigh Technical School, he says things went quickly and disastrously wrong. He says Thomas promised him a sponsored place on the school's annual camping trip to central Australia. "Instead, I was collected at the airport by Thomas, who said the school trip was cancelled and he'd make it up to me with a few days in country Victoria," says Garry. On a weekly basis from there, Garry says he was taken by Thomas to dinner at the nearby Turf Club Hotel and then back to Thomas's headmaster's office, where he was raped — painful assaults that he felt powerless to prevent. Much other abuse occurred during school hours, after Thomas had locked two sets of doors leading to his office. "If I didn't want to do it, he would just erupt into this absolute tirade of screaming and shouting, and I would just die, because I thought the security guard at the school was going to hear it," says Garry. "I remember being terrified of it coming out, and Thomas knew that. And from there, he just completely took control of my life. "That's when the letters began — prolific psychological assessments of my behaviour, my likelihood of success, the screening of my friends. He vetted my friends to the point of running checks on them to reveal reasons why I shouldn't be associated with them if I wanted to succeed in life. "And every opportunity this bastard had to go away somewhere, I was dragged along to 'see the countryside'. There was no-one to turn to. Everyone seemed to trust and like him, as far as I could make out. I remember the innuendo when I'd be asked by school friends why I was always in the principal's office. I'd go and throw up. "Thomas was coercive and had a fierce temper. He took many photos of me, and along with photocopies of the long, explicit letters he would write me, they were kept in a locked drawer in his desk, with a note on top: 'to be destroyed in the event of my death'. He must have destroyed that file, but the mere thought of it kept me in tow and often paralysed me with fear for years. "It was a nightmare. The stress of it was just horrible." Garry says Thomas also entrapped him in an insidious blackmail scheme — the promise that one of Thomas's powerful political friends could pave the way to Garry gaining Australian citizenship and with it, a ticket to stability and success in life. But it was not until three years into Garry's ordeal that Thomas finally delivered. "He had Sir Phillip Lynch escalate my citizenship application in 1980," Garry says. "They'd been at university together. Thomas was very connected and proud of using those connections to raise money for the school. His tentacles went everywhere." Lynch died in 1984. Recently, Garry says he was shocked to read online rumours about Thomas's abuse of Oakleigh Technical School boys at Chadstone's Red Carpet Motor Inn, a budget motel near the school where Thomas often took Garry for abuse. "I never knew how to get out of it. I would try and it would always end up in a mess. It would push me to the precipice of committing suicide at times. But I just figured 'this is something I have to go through' to get an education. And he was my legal guardian until I was 18. I look back on it now and I don't know how I survived. "Thomas was incredibly cruel, a manipulator, dishonest, and clearly had those 'connections' to call on when he needed. He was a serial paedophile, basically, and a psychopath. A psychopathic rapist. "I'd hate to think of the number of lives he damaged. He damaged mine badly enough." After Garry finally made his escape from "five years in hell", he says Thomas sent Garry threatening letters for months and tried so often to track him down that Garry eventually fled interstate and then overseas. "He still had so much power over me, because he knew so many people who could affect my life," says Garry. In the late 1980s, Garry told his then-partner of the abuse and implored her to tell the police on his behalf. He says police were apparently already aware of Thomas, but Garry was left with the impression that statutes of limitation prevented further investigation. In alumni communities, false rumours spread of Thomas's apparent late-1980s suicide in the face of impending charges. In reality, Thomas would live another three decades, dying without a criminal record in 2012. In recent years, Garry says he's been shocked and angered by media reports of the extent of the broader child sexual abuse epidemic in Victorian government schools. "Clearly, there was an issue in Victoria at that time, and through other institutions too," Garry says. "But if Thomas was moved around, the education department has a lot to answer for. "What needs to be understood here is that there is no expiration date on the trauma of sexual abuse. Historical sexual offending by former teachers and principals in the Victorian government school system will be canvassed further in an upcoming $48-million truth-telling process, which flows from the Victorian government's 2024 board of inquiry into sexual abuse of schoolchildren at Beaumaris Primary and 23 other government schools. The final report of the Beaumaris inquiry revealed decades of glaring failures and a "culture that prioritised the reputation of the education system over the safety of children". In announcing the truth-telling process in June 2024, Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan acknowledged the state's "serious and systematic" failure to protect children in government schools. "We failed to keep these children safe," Allan said at the announcement. "We failed to listen when they spoke out. We failed to act to ensure that it did not happen again. "What should have been a happy place became a place of horror for these victim-survivors." The truth-telling process, which will include the first systematic review of the Victorian Education Department's failings, will be open to survivors of sexual abuse at all Victorian government schools and is expected to conclude in 2026. Contact Russell Jackson at or if you require more secure communication, please choose an option on the confidential tips page.
