Pupil strapped at church school wins £1m damages
A man who sued the Catholic Church after being strapped by a schoolteacher 17 years previously was awarded more than £1 million damages by a court in Australia in 2001.
Pupil strapped at church school wins £1m damages
A MAN who sued the Catholic
Church after being strapped by a schoolteacher 17 years ago was awarded more
than £1 million damages.
The unprecedented award,
described by the Church as “manifestly excessive”, is expected to pave the way
for countless compensation claims from pupils who received corporal punishment
at school. Paul Hogan was a 13-year-old pupil at St John’s College, Sydney,
when he was strapped eight times on the right hand in two punishment sessions
in 1984; first for wearing a grubby sports uniform, and later for making an
alleged racial taunt.
Mr Hogan, now 30, sued the
trustees of the Catholic Church and Denis Fricot, the school’s discipline
master, claiming the strappings were excessive and had left him with a
permanently damaged right hand as well as psychological and emotional problems.
The Supreme Court in Sydney
was told that Mr Hogan, who has a PhD in civil engineering, still felt pain,
suffered pins and needles in his wrist and was unable to use his right hand
properly. The punishments had damaged the boy’s hand so severely that he was
left with chronic soft tissue disorder, a disability that had drastically reduced
his earning capacity, it was claimed.
Mr Fricot, who was made to
re-enact the strappings in court, denied that they had left any bruising or
discoloration on Mr Hogan’s hand. He rejected claims that he had held the
leather strap in both hands, or wielded it above his head before bringing it
down on the boy.
He claimed he had been
given no guidance or instruction on how to mete out discipline. He told the
court: “I thought the best thing to do was to learn as I went along.” Mr Fricot
said he strapped Mr Hogan on the second occasion after another teacher in the
playground heard the boy calling him a “black bastard”.
After a 13-day civil trial,
a jury of two men and two women took two hours to find that the Church and Mr
Fricot had breached their duty of care. They also found that there was no
proper cause for the first strapping, and that neither punishment was moderate
or reasonable.
They awarded Mr Hogan A$2.7
million to cover future lost earnings, past economic loss, damages and medical
expenses. Ian Harrison, counsel for the Church and Mr Fricot, told Justice
James Wood: “I don't know how to respond to that figure, Your Honour.”
Natalie McNamara, a
spokesman for the Catholic Education Department, said afterwards: “The verdict
is so manifestly excessive as to warrant consideration being given to an
appeal. There was conflicting evidence about what occurred and varying opinions
were expressed by doctors.”
Rodney Molesworth,
president of the Federation of Parents’ and Citizens’ Associations, a lobby
group that opposes corporal punishment, said the damages award was “quite fair
and reasonable”. Corporal punishment was banned in most Australian schools some
years ago.
As published in
The Daily Telegraph (UK), 15 February 2001.
Picture credit: Unknown.
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