Survivors of a paedophile teacher who was moved around Victorian schools for decades received up to $34 million compensation from the state government – the highest payout linked to a state school offender.
Vincent Henry Reynolds was jailed in 2019 after he pleaded guilty to sexually abusing 38 children over three decades at state primary schools across north and central Victoria.
Vincent Henry Reynolds outside court in Wodonga.
The 83-year-old is serving a 12-year sentence and will be eligible for parole after spending nine years behind bars.
The $34 million in compensation paid to his victims is the most the department has paid out in relation to a single perpetrator.
But one man, abused by Reynolds as a schoolboy and who did not wish to be named, told The Age that the damage could not be measured in monetary terms. “It’s lives lost, education abandoned, health and happiness destroyed,” the survivor said.
“He could have been stopped, and we could have been spared. It’s heartbreaking.”
Rightside Legal partner Grace Wilson said mismanagement by education authorities over the years had allowed Reynolds to wreak havoc on many lives.
“The mismanagement beggars belief. The cost to the state of repeatedly putting a sex offender back into the classroom is big, but the cost to the victims is much, much bigger,” Wilson said.
The lawyer said the compensation helped many victims put their lives back together, but only to an extent. “Nothing can restore the childhood innocence they were robbed of.”
The state government faces a growing load of cases as victims of historic sex abuse in government schools seek compensation.
The Education Department increased the sum set aside for damages payments financial year to more than $84 million, from $63 million the previous year, to cover the increasing number of historical sexual abuse claims and the rising amounts paid to victims.
Reynolds began abusing children from the start of his teaching career in 1960 at the age of 19 and continued until police eventually took action in 1992.
Reynolds would molest his students while pretending to correct their homework, while marking their schoolwork, at opportunistic times such as when his class was watching a film or when a child needed to change clothes.
The Education Department was made aware of his predatory behaviour more than a decade before he was eventually caught when a parent complained.
The teacher voluntarily sought psychiatric treatment and took time off work, but resumed teaching in 1981 because police had not laid any charges against him.
“It is absolutely bloody stupid sending you back to the classroom because you’ll just keep on doing it,” the psychiatrist who treated Reynolds told him after learning of the decision.
But Reynolds would continue to abuse more students for another decade, as he moved around schools.
Vincent Henry Reynolds in his teaching days.
The judge who sentenced the teacher in 2019 said “catastrophic failures” in the education and justice systems allowed Reynolds to keep offending.
“The Education Department, the police, and others who did not properly investigate, pursue or deal with complaints made about you over the years, have added to the anguish and trauma suffered by so many victims,” County Court judge Gabriele Cannon said.
The psychiatrist was “clearly contemptuous” of the department’s decision to let Reynolds return to teaching, she said.
“How on earth you interpreted this as giving you permission to perpetrate more evil, is beyond me.”
“It was within your power to have stopped, had you wanted to ... your encounter with the psychiatrist in 1980 led you to believe ... he was giving you permission to re-offend,” she said.
In 1988, another parent accused Reynolds of indecently assaulting a child, which was investigated, but no action was taken.
Four years later, another parent complained that Reynolds assaulted their child and police took action. The teacher admitted to 14 charges in relation to more than a dozen boys in 1992.
Instead of jail, he was ordered to pay a $16,000 fine. He never taught again. Some victims sued the disgraced teacher, who declared bankruptcy.
But Reynolds would again face court at Frankston in 2013, where he was convicted of molesting a boy at a camp in the early 1960s. He was ordered to serve a suspended sentence and fined $10,000.
An Education Department spokesman thanked the survivors who detailed their experiences of historical child sexual abuse. “We are doing everything we can to ensure that victim-survivors of historical abuse get the supports they need to heal.”
With Noel Towell
Lifeline: 13 11 14 and lifeline.org.au.
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