NEWS.com.au | Student 'isolated' after telling of rape (November 30, 2004)

NEWS.com.au | Student 'isolated' after telling of rape (November 30, 2004)


Student 'isolated' after telling of rape
November 30, 2004

A TEENAGE girl today told a court how an exclusive Sydney school made her feel alone and isolated after she was gang raped on a school trip to Italy.


Suing ... the girl with her father outside court.


The girl, now 18, is suing Tara Anglican Girls School for breaching its duty of care over the incident in 2001.

The teenager, who can only be identified as "N", claims Tara failed to supervise her properly during the trip or offer adequate treatment and counselling after the alleged rape.

She told the NSW District Court that being raped by four men on the bonnet of a car in the Italian town of Sorrento was the worst experience of her life, but the teachers chaperoning her offered no emotional support after she told them what happened.

Instead, they persuaded her to accept blame for the incident and sign a statement saying the sex was consensual.

The teachers also pressured her to tell her father and school principal Carol Bowern – who was in court for today's proceedings – that she had agreed to the sex.

"They wanted me to tell (them) it had been consensual, which was not the truth," she said.

Having been told by a teacher "to go and pack my bags and be ready to go the next day", N flew home – and was given a bill for her cab fare and the morning-after pill at the airport.

Tara denies liability and sought to protect its identity, but Judge Allan Hughes today lifted a court order suppressing its name.

Counsel for Tara, Ian Harrison SC, said N had written a statement soon after the incident saying the sex was consensual.

But N told the court she wrote it because "I just wanted it to go away, pretend it didn't happen".

"The teachers were telling me how traumatic it would be to go through with the rape charges," she said.

She was told that if she said the sex was consensual, the trip would continue and her parents need not know of the incident.

The court was told the girl did not return to classes at Tara after the trip, and sat her School Certificate alone in a room next to the principal's office.

"Mrs Bowern organised for me to be in that room so I wouldn't be with the other students," N said.

"It was awful being alone, being isolated."

She had already planned to change schools at the end of Year 10 because her parents were moving, but Mrs Bowern offered to have her transferred early.

The court also heard the principal had asked her to sign a statement saying she would not return to the school, but was "still welcome to be a Tara old girl".

N said she told the truth when Mrs Bowern asked what had happened in Sorrento, but the principal stopped her when she said the men had pinned her down on the car bonnet.

"From then on she continued to talk about how I must apologise to the teachers for what I had done on the trip ... for breaking the school rules."

N told the court she still felt guilty about the incident, and broke down in the witness box during cross-examination by Mr Harrison.

N agreed she had a condom in her wallet in Italy, but said a classmate had given it to her some time before the trip and she didn't expect to use it.

Mr Harrison also produced recent photographs of N dressed in a skirt and sitting on a bar stool, suggesting it would take confidence to wear such a short skirt in a pub.

But N said she just wanted to dress like her peers.

Judge Hughes adjourned the case until tomorrow.

AAP