By AIDAN KNIGHT
WARNING: This story contains details of child sexual abuse and assault that may be distressing to some readers. Support is available by contacting 1800 RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or the Victims of Crime Helpline on 1800 819 817.
LATROBE Valley residents are facing unsettling reminders of past failings in the education system, as six former students of the now-imprisoned teacher Peter Farmer brought legal proceedings against the Victorian Department of Education (VDE) last month for alleged negligence in failing to stop his long-running abuse of children at a local primary school.
Not to be confused with the Trafalgar resident (and 2021 Trafalgar Citizen of the Year) of the same name, Farmer was a teacher at Newborough Primary School and made infamous throughout the 1990s after his perpetrations of sexual abuse against his students was first revealed.
Farmer committed repeated sexual crimes while teaching from 1986 to 1988, violating students as young as eight-years-old.
Concerns were first raised in July 1988 when a local milkbar attendant alleged to have seen Farmer acting inappropriately with a female student on the school oval.
The attendant, given the pseudonym ‘Claire Jones’ during the court processes, informed the principal, at which point Farmer was told not to return to the school. The milkbar was located across the road from the school premises.
Then-principal, Brian Rodgers informed the Education Department directly after learning of Farmer’s actions from Ms Jones, who then provided him with a written statement of her account. Farmer then alarmingly left addressed parting gifts for several students in their desks, with corresponding notes, before fleeing the Latrobe Valley. Mr Rodgers maintains this was the first time anything inappropriate had been flagged against Farmer.
The crimes resurfaced publicly in 2019, when the Latrobe Valley Sexual Offences and Child Abuse squad received a formal report from a victim, triggering a new investigation into Farmer, now as historical sex crimes.
He was located by Victoria Police, living in Queensland, in 2022, where he was then arrested, and pleaded guilty in April this year to 10 charges of sexual assault and gross indecency related to five victims.
During the interview stage of his arrest, Farmer denied certain allegations on the record, while admitting others. He had been set to face these charges earlier in the year, but had fled once again, having to be tracked down and arrested by Victoria Police.
Farmer attended most court sessions from prison via video link to the Victorian County Court in Bairnsdale, facing Judge Geoffrey Chettle, who detailed that all of Farmer’s victims were girls, and that he “offended against your victim in the presence of other female students.” Judge Chettle also saw that Farmer’s potential risk of reoffending has reduced as he has aged. He was sentenced to six-and-a-half years with a non-parole period of four-and-a-half.
Ms Jones sees it to be more appropriate that he serve this length of sentence for each victim violated in his care, and it is only a fraction in comparison to the “life sentence” one survivor has described the impact of the abuse has had on her life.
The same survivor described in a victim impact statement heard during the sentence hearing that “there … has not been a day … that I have not thought about, or felt the shadow of the abuse inflicted on me at school by Peter Farmer.”
Another described how “In order to try to block the memories … I turned to alcohol,” with devastating long-term consequences for herself and her family.
A third victim described difficulty visiting a family member, whose house is near the school where she was abused.
The offending was not confined to the Latrobe Valley or even Victoria, with Farmer’s interstate teaching moves leading to further allegations of abuse in the Northern Territory, though the timeframe remains unconfirmed.
This was revealed when six victims decided to sue the Victorian Education Department for negligence in its handling of Farmer’s employment and the threats he posed to children. It is their belief that the Department’s failures led to further preventable abuse. One of the six plaintiffs alleges she was sexually assaulted at Farmer’s home, saying the trauma led to decades of substance dependence and long-term use of antidepressant medication.
Another victim has described being physically assaulted and beaten after attempting to defend classmates from Farmer’s abuse.
Judge Chettle summarised the offending during the sentencing as “extensive, repetitive and repulsive. Each offence involved a serious breach of trust; trust in the community, trust of the parents for their children, trust that you would care for them and not molest them. Your victims were young, fragile and innocent girls.”
Furthermore, he went on to say to Farmer, “lengthy delays are not uncommon in these cases as children often are reluctant or cannot, as was the case here, report the offending.
You enjoyed life in the Queensland sunshine while your victims have endured years of personal distress.” When convicted, Farmer had already served 103 days of his sentence.
The Express located NT court documents that tell Farmer faced the Supreme Court on March 12, 1997 over similar allegations raised while working at a school in Tennant Creek, while he resided in Alice Springs.
Farmer was 37 at the time, had lived in the NT for three-and-a-half years, in Alice Springs specifically for two of those, and lost his job as a result of the allegations he faced.
He was engaged at the time, and had been so since the December prior. The court document mentions “allegations of similar offences against children in the state of Victoria”, and The Crown suggesting there was a risk he committed “further offences against children whilst on bail”. It also outlined that he was not permitted to return to Tennant Creek for the safety of the child violated under his care. There is no public record of Farmer ever being convicted for his offending in the Northern Territory.
In a statement provided to the Express, a Department of Education spokesperson said: “We unreservedly apologise to any person impacted by historical child sexual abuse in any of our government schools and continue to look at ways we can strengthen child safety. School should always be a safe place for children and young people.”
“We continue to encourage anyone who has experienced any form of abuse as a current or former student to report it to both the Department of Education and Victoria Police so perpetrators can be held to account and victims can access the support they need and deserve. We acknowledge the courage it takes for victim-survivors to report abuse, and our commitment to continue strengthening our response to allegations of sexual abuse in schools is unwavering.”
The Department indicated to the lawyer representing the victims that they would not continue to fight the survivors about their legal responsibility for what was done to them at Newborough Primary. There has been no further update at the time of print.
The Victorian Department of Education has publicly apologised for historic failures and says it is committed to improvements in the child safety framework. The Department also confirmed that an employment limitation was applied to Farmer’s record upon his resignation in 1988, preventing further employment within Victorian government schools.
It said there was no record of prior complaints made against Farmer before his posting at Newborough, though archived documents suggest communication between the Department and Victoria Police occurred at least once during that period. The records, however, do not specify whether that contact occurred before or after Farmer’s resignation.
The Express first reported on Peter Farmer after the incident on the Newborough Primary oval, on the front page of Thursday, September 1, 1988.
The report detailed that the Police had no knowledge of the allegations until an anonymous letter signed ‘Disgusted Parent’ was provided to the Express, before being handed to Moe Police Senior Sergeant Peter Hendy. The police then discovered that the Ministry of Education (now the Department) had already carried out its investigation and Farmer had resigned, despite police not being informed.
The only action taken as a consequence was the marking of the teacher’s file as “not to be re-employed” in the Victorian system.
A second Express article published the following Tuesday (September 6) stated that the Morwell CIB chief John King, had written to the ministry to confirm whether or not the parents of those abused would be seeking to pursue the investigation, leaving it in their hands. An investigation was undertaken, but the parents of the victims did not want to put their children through any proceedings in court, reportedly.
The six women pursuing the Department legally are being represented by Grace Wilson of Rightside Legal, who was the lawyer successful in securing the $100 million settlement for the ANZ survivors of the thalidomide drug, and numerous winning cases of both asbestos-related and child sexual abuse survivors.
Rightside is the firm responsible for securing the only two child abuse cases to run to verdict in Victoria against the Education Department, fighting in cases concerning other prolific paedophiles. The firm is also the same responsible for the notorious Gippsland paedophile Gerard McNamara, convicted for crimes against students while teaching in the Catholic system in Sale and Traralgon. Nicknamed ‘The Rat’, McNamara has been the subject of many articles in the Express and sister-publication the Gippsland Times, relating to his crimes in 1995
Ms Wilson is confident there are other victims who are yet to come forward, and implores anyone to do so, whether from Farmer’s time at Newborough Primary, or elsewhere.
She emphasised the conviction was aided greatly by the assistance of Ms Jones and her account, which snowballed everything into motion initially, and anyone who could offer similar information even as a bystander would be doing a service to a “pack of real women”, who deserve justice.
While the department ceasing to fight them in the case is a win, Ms Wilson maintains, “The survivors of Peter Farmer are calling on their community to share what they know”.
“We will succeed for these survivors. We’ve run and won much harder cases. But every memory helps. There are people in Gippsland who know more – other students, parents, teachers from the school, even other survivors. I want to talk to all of them.
“These women are tough. They’ve survived the abuse. They’ve survived a brutal, drawn-out criminal process. They’re claiming what was taken from them.”
Newborough Primary School was approached by the Express, but declined to comment.
