OPINION Susan Petterson
In 2018, more than four decades after leaving Shore (The Sydney Church of England Grammar School in North Sydney) , Andrew Coffey went to NSW Police to report an event he says occurred in 1974. He told police that, as a student at the School, he had been physically and sexually assaulted by teacher Colin Fearon.
Coffey says he has carried the consequences of that event throughout his adult life.
The consequences of abuse were central to all the findings of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Former Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen’s statement to the Royal Commission described survivors and their families as having waited decades “to hear someone in authority take responsibility for the harm that had been inflicted on them.”
For Coffey, going to the police was only the beginning. He wanted to understand Fearon’s history, what had happened at Shore and how the abuse had been allowed to occur. He should have been protected.
Through police records, freedom-of-information requests and his own enquiries, Coffey discovered that he was not the only former student to have made allegations concerning Fearon. There had been allegations elsewhere, and public reporting also refers to another allegation concerning Fearon and a Shore student in 1974.
Hang on.
Other allegations had apparently been made concerning Fearon?
So when Coffey came forward, what, if anything, did Shore already know about him? What did it do to find out more?
The public record does not make that clear.
The task of investigation
It is important to be clear about time. I am not suggesting that every feature of the present NSW child-safety framework applied to Shore when it became aware of Coffey’s allegation. Nor am I suggesting that a school should conduct a parallel inquiry that compromises a police investigation.
But the expectations of institutions have changed, and changed because of the Royal Commission and the legal and regulatory reforms that followed it. Under the current NSW Reportable Conduct Scheme, relevant entities must plan and conduct an investigation into a reportable allegation, manage any real or perceived risk to children, and report the investigation’s findings, outcomes, recommendations and actions to the Office of the Children’s Guardian.
A deceased alleged perpetrator cannot pose a current risk to children. But that does not make a historic allegation institutionally irrelevant. It may reveal records that have never been connected, earlier warnings that were never understood, other former students who may have relevant information or who may still be carrying the consequences alone, and institutional failures that require examination.
A child-safe institution should ask: what does this allegation require us to find out?
What did Shore investigate?
Much of the work of reconstructing Fearon’s history appears to have been undertaken by Coffey himself. He went to police, pursued records, searched for previous allegations and tried to identify witnesses. Public reporting suggests NSW Police had previously obtained historical material from Shore relating to Fearon.
But what investigation did Shore undertake when Coffey came forward?
What School records were searched? What complaints or correspondence existed? What material had previously been provided to police? Were other former students known to have made allegations? And what information was then provided to Coffey?
I do not know.
What does emerge clearly from the court record is one particular historical document.
The 1974 Punishment Register.
The Punishment Register
Coffey alleged that before Easter 1974 Fearon took him into the Sergeant Major’s office, caned him and sexually assaulted him.
The Punishment Register contained no entry corresponding to that event.
It did, however, record a caning of Coffey on 27 May 1974, by a different teacher. Another student was recorded as being caned at the same time.
Shore obtained handwriting evidence concerning that entry and intended to rely on the Register as evidence casting doubt on Coffey’s account. Justice Garling described the difficulty confronting Coffey: he was facing contemporary documents which appeared to suggest that his recollection was wrong.
It is not difficult to see why this might have been disorientating. What did the Register actually establish?
The Register established that a different caning, by a different teacher, on a different date, had been recorded.
It was silent about the event Coffey alleged.
How much can be inferred from that silence? Was every caning invariably recorded? Were teachers expected to make an entry every time? Was compliance checked? And if Fearon had used a caning as part of a concealed sexual assault, would he necessarily have recorded it in the School’s official punishment book?
The Register may have been relevant. But its limits were also relevant.
Coffey wanted to investigate
By September 2022, Coffey no longer had lawyers and was representing himself in the Supreme Court. He sought an adjournment to investigate the Register, locate the other student and teacher named in it, and pursue other evidence concerning Fearon. He wanted to reconcile the record with his memory.
Shore opposed the adjournment.
The Court granted it, finding that further investigation could uncover relevant evidence and that the interests of justice required Coffey to have the opportunity to undertake it.
That seems an important moment to consider through a model litigant lens.
Shore was entitled to rely on relevant evidence. But was that the end of its responsibility? Legally, maybe.
Here was a survivor, without a lawyer and without the resources to employ investigators, trying to understand and challenge historical evidence held by the institution he was suing.
Could Shore have helped establish how complete its own Register was? Could it have assisted in locating the former student or teacher? Could it have explained what other material it held concerning Fearon? What investigation had Shore itself undertaken?
And did Coffey have access to the same historical picture available to the School?
Coffey was asking to be heard
In April 2022, Coffey sent an email to the Headmaster of Shore with a letter attached for Council. Coffey explicitly requested that his letter be printed and given to each individual council member.
Coffey sent me a copy of the letter, and I have read it in full. It is an uncomfortable read.
Coffey commented: ‘Just read it again – I did kind of let fly…’.
He was angry. He was frustrated. He was writing from a place of serious psychological distress.
More fundamentally, he was asking the people who governed the School to meet with him.
Coffey says that his repeated requests to meet Council members had been ignored. He also says:
“I have approached the Archbishop’s office on too many occasions to meet with him, I have never received a reply.”
Coffey even wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury asking whether he might intervene and counsel the Archbishop. Coffey says he received a reply within an hour. Whether Canterbury took the matter any further I do not know, but Sydney has not, in recent years, cultivated a reputation for welcoming episcopal guidance from England.
There is something unsettling here.
It is relatively easy to care for the hypothetical survivor described in a Safe Ministry policy.
The harder test comes when an actual survivor is angry, distressed, distrustful, difficult to manage, and writes a long letter asking the governing body to meet him.
Victim-centred care is most meaningful when the victim does not arrive in a convenient form.
Final offer
In September 2023, Coffey received a letter from the School’s lawyers headed:
“Without prejudice save as to costs – FINAL OFFER”.
Coffey sent me a copy of the letter, and I have read it in full.
I do not intend to reproduce private settlement correspondence here. But the tone matters. The letter does more than explain that Shore disputes Coffey’s claim.
I will summarise the School’s position with more generosity of tone than the letter itself provides: a man alleging childhood sexual abuse was told that fragmented memory was a reason to doubt his account, while the institution described its settlement offer as an act of concern for his wellbeing.
Fragmented or incomplete recall of a traumatic event — particularly one alleged to have occurred almost fifty years earlier — is hardly remarkable. The Royal Commission recognised that survivors may disclose only parts of their experience, that disclosure can unfold over time, and that many survivors do not speak about abuse until decades later. Trauma research similarly recognises that voluntary recall can be fragmented, disorganised, and incomplete.
When I read the letter’s description of Coffey’s apparent uncertainty about what happened to him, I do not see a person trying to deceive. I see a person trying to engage honestly with evidence that does not fit neatly with his memory.
This is not a trivial distinction.
I struggle to see what the tone of the letter was meant to achieve, unless the School’s lawyers regarded Coffey’s uncertainty as evidence of unreliability or dishonesty. Perhaps I am too soft, and this is simply ordinary robust settlement correspondence.
But the Royal Commission asked institutions to think beyond ordinary adversarial practice.
The question is whether there was another way to speak to a psychologically vulnerable survivor whose imperfect memory was itself part of the history being examined.
Did anyone stop to think what receiving that letter would do to Coffey?
Why not simply use redress?
Shore participates in the National Redress Scheme. Coffey chose instead to pursue a civil claim.
That was his choice.
The Royal Commission anticipated that survivors would make different choices. It recommended a redress scheme for those who wished to use it, and separately recommended model litigant principles for institutions responding to survivors who chose civil litigation.
There may be many reasons why a survivor chooses one route rather than another. Coffey has consistently spoken in terms of wanting to understand what happened, wanting to be heard, and wanting institutional accountability.
We do not need to decide whether those were his only reasons.
The important point is that choosing civil litigation did not make him any less deserving of a trauma-informed institutional response.
Indeed, that is precisely why the Royal Commission made separate recommendations about model litigant conduct.
What happened in the end?
By early 2024, Coffey was again unrepresented and his psychological condition had deteriorated. Justice Garling concluded that he was not capable of conducting the litigation himself.
The judge said it was “abundantly clear” that the litigation was causing continuing “stress, anxiety and trauma”.
The April 2024 trial was vacated and the proceedings were stayed until further order.
A survivor had entered a civil process. Almost three years later, a Supreme Court judge was recording that the litigation itself was causing continuing stress, anxiety and trauma to such an extent that he could no longer conduct it.
This is not about assigning blame for that outcome, or alleging intention on the part of any individual involved. The Royal Commission did not suggest that institutions necessarily intended to cause further trauma.
Its concern was whether an institution’s approach to civil litigation was designed to minimise the potential for re-traumatisation.
Throughout the process, who within the institution remained responsible for asking:
“What is this doing to the person making the claim?”
These are not findings of wrongdoing. They are questions.
But after a Royal Commission specifically recommended that institutions adopt a victim-centred approach to civil abuse claims, they are questions Sydney Anglicans should be willing to answer.
The public record does not provide enough information to answer them responsibly. So, rather than speculate, Synod should ask for an independent review.
Not to decide whether Coffey was abused.
Not to determine Shore’s legal liability.
Not to decide compensation.
But to answer one institutional question:
When one of our organisations was confronted with a historic child-sexual-abuse claim, did it respond in the way the Royal Commission said institutions like ours should?
As of September 20, 2026: Coffey is still waiting for the Archbishop to respond to his emails.