Child sexual abuse survivor Katrina Munting is suing the Tasmanian Education Department

Child sexual abuse survivor Katrina Munting watched as her abuser was sentenced to jail, however she is now hoping the Education Department shall be held accountable for allegedly failing to guard her from the abuse.

Ms Munting has launched a civil case in the Supreme Court in Hobart, alleging the division failed to guard her at the time of the abuse and in the years following her disclosure.

In August 2020, Marcus James Pollard pleaded responsible in the Supreme Court in Hobart to persistent sexual abuse of a youngster.

He admitted to abusing then 15-year-old Katrina Bolton on a number of events in 1998 and 1999 at Rose Bay High School, the place he taught at the time, and the place she was certainly one of his college students in Year 9 and Year 10.

When Ms Munting disclosed a few of Pollard’s abuse a 12 months after it occurred, he, the courtroom heard, was made to resign.

However, it was not till Ms Munting made a report back to police about 20 years after the abuse that it was investigated.

“The college system ought to have protected me. The Department of Education failed me terribly, destroying my adolescence, marring my senior education, and basically altering my future trajectory,” Ms Munting stated on Monday.

“If the State had protected me and different college students, this case would by no means have occurred.”

Ms Munting stated she had filed her civil case in opposition to the Education Department, Pollard and the principal at the time, in order that they might be held to account.

“Their particular shortcomings must be highlighted, they must be acknowledged, and steps taken to rectify the hurt accomplished.

“Ultimately, it is my hope [this suit] will help the authorities to stop these occasions from taking place in the future. A generic apology is simply not sufficient. That is not true accountability.”

In her assertion of declare, filed on Friday, Ms Munting alleges the sexual assaults and battery occurred throughout college hours on college premises, on a faculty camp at Maria Island and at Pollard’s house in 1998 and 1999.

Also included in the assertion is the declare that she suffered accidents, loss and harm as a consequence of the breaches of the duties of care owed by Pollard and the college principal.

The Education Department’s dealing with of sexual abuse complaints is certainly one of 4 most important focus areas of the Commission of Inquiry into baby sexual abuse in Tasmanian authorities establishments.

A assessment of kid sexual abuse in Tasmanian public faculties launched final week discovered there was “some file of concern” about greater than 40 present workers, with half doubtlessly requiring additional investigation.

The assessment detailed how the Education Department had “wilfully disregarded” complaints of sexual abuse from college students, as a substitute shuffling abusers between faculties, with the intention to defend the division from authorized, monetary and reputational dangers.

When a shortened model of the report was launched on November 9, Education Minister Sarah Courtney expressed deep sorrow about the experiences of some Tasmanian college students, and has pledged to implement all of the report’s 20 suggestions.

Ms Munting stated that dedication, whereas “a really optimistic step in the path of significant restore and alter, for therefore many people, this is too little too late”.

“It’s staggering that it has taken this lengthy for an inquiry to be undertaken, not to mention discover the info … which so many people have been already all too conscious.

“The report was clear in its findings that the division sought to guard itself all through the Seventies, Nineteen Eighties and Nineties from authorized, monetary and reputational dangers … Unfortunately, I witnessed this firsthand as a type of college students in danger and abused.”

Ms Munting stated establishments wanted to be “overtly proactive” relating to prevention of sexual abuse and stated they need to work with the complete of society to vary not solely coverage, however the tradition of establishments.

Pollard was sentenced on October 27, 2020, to 3 years’ jail, with a non-parole interval of 18 months.