‘I was nine when I was sexually abused by a teacher while at school camp

A man who was sexually abused at the age of nine said he waited almost 40 years to see the teacher who perpetrated the abuse jailed and for an Australian department of education to “unreservedly” apologise for failing “to protect” him at the time.

Ross Dobson, 58, a paramedic and safeguarding specialist originally from the Australian state of Victoria and now living in Buckinghamshire, was on a school camp in 1977 when a teacher, Robert Leonard Morris, sat Ross on his knee while watching a film and touched his crotch over his trousers.

Later that night, while Ross was getting ready to sleep in the camp’s dormitory-style accommodation, he said Morris “decided to sleep on the bed next to” his, before he “put his hand down” Ross’s trousers inside his sleeping bag and “began masturbating” him.

The abuse happened two more times over the course of the next 12 hours, before Ross disclosed what had happened to his parents within a couple of days after returning home from camp.

It was reported to the police and a court case ensued, but a legal technicality at the time would mean Morris would never be sent to prison for what he did to Ross, rather he was jailed for six years in March 2016 for crimes against six other boys.

Ross was then involved in a class-action lawsuit against the Victorian Government where he received compensation and an apology in August 2017.

He told PA Real Life: “When they gave us a figure and the apology letter came through, I just sat and cried because I felt a little bit empty.

“I look back at some of the things that I did as a young adult and the damage that I did to myself and to others – two divorces, numerous jobs, and I could never settle in one spot.

“The nightmares and flashbacks … and then to have someone write a letter that felt very generic, it would have meant more if they had sat with the people that went through it and tried to understand what damage had been done,” he added.

Ross described his childhood before the abuse as “relatively normal”, despite moving around “a lot” due to his Geordie father’s job as a firefighter.

At nine, Ross attended Cranbourne North Primary School in the late 1970s and said a teacher, Robert Leonard Morris, was widely known to “sit boys on his knees”.

Ross added: “He did it to me on the way to swimming once and he put his hand on my crotch.

“All the kids just kind of accepted it in those days.”

Things escalated when Ross was later at a week-long school camp where Morris “came to stay” halfway through the trip.

It was there that Morris repeated the action of putting Ross on his knee during a film and then later insisted he sleep on the bed next to the nine-year-old, despite there being a separate “room where the teachers would sleep”.

Ross said: “While everyone was getting ready for bed, he put his hand down my trousers inside my sleeping bag and began masturbating me.

“I was terrified they would know what was going on.

“During the night, I could smell him next to me. He knelt by my bed, and he began doing the same thing again and pushed the sleeping bag lower and lower.

“I felt his mouth on me. He orally raped me and then I felt his hand on the side of my face and realised he was trying to get me to open my mouth and put his penis in.

“I said no and rolled away, but I was terrified I was going to get into trouble for saying no to a teacher.

“He went back to bed, and I could hear a noise, so I looked over and he was masturbating himself.”

The next morning, Ross said Morris touched him under his sleeping bag and abused him one more time.

In the aftermath of the abuse, Ross said his demeanour “completely changed” and he “withdrew from anything that was going on” at camp.

Tasked with dishwashing duties on the trip, Ross said teachers found him “crying into the dishes” one morning.

He returned home on a Friday and disclosed the abuse to his father by the end of that weekend, which he said he had “rehearsed so many times”.

Ross added: “I could hear him and mum crying afterwards.”

On Monday morning, Ross’s father reported the abuse to the school, who encouraged him to go to the police, where Ross made a statement.

The 10-year-old ended up giving evidence at a 1978 criminal trial against Robert Leonard Morris and Ross said he felt “belittled” and “ridiculed” by the defence barrister.

“When I came out of there, I broke down,” Ross said. “I was just an absolute mess.”

Ross said a Victorian state government “rule about uncorroborated evidence by a person under 14” meant that his evidence was not admissible, leading a jury to acquit Morris of abusing Ross.

Ross said finding out the result of the trial “flicked a switch” in him: “When that fell apart, so did I.

“I lost all respect for anyone in authority and education.

“I went from being a happy, smart little kid, who followed the rules and was involved in everything to someone who didn’t want to do anything any more,” he added.

In the immediate aftermath, he struggled to sleep: “The nightmares were just insane.

“I would wake up at night clenching my teeth so hard that I have no idea how they didn’t break.”

For the next decade, Ross said he would regularly get into fights, began drinking heavily from the age of 13, and got tattoos as “another part” of his armour, before he joined a group of skinheads.

Ross credits two things with helping to turn his life around – his uncle introducing him to boxing at 19 and starting a career as a paramedic at 30.

After meeting his partner, Amanda Essex, better known as Atty, in 2004 and marrying in 2011, Ross decided to move to the UK in 2016 with the two youngest of their four children.

That same year in March, Ross found out Morris had been sentenced to six years in jail for abusing six other boys and then Ross was one of 10 complainants in a class-action lawsuit that paid out a total of seven million Australian dollars (£3.7 million) in 2017 for historic sexual abuse claims.

An apology letter from the Victorian State Government Department of Education and Training read, in part: “The department failed to protect you at a time in your life when you were very vulnerable.

“On behalf of the department and its employees, I apologise to you unreservedly.”

Morris has since died in prison.

Today, despite counselling and therapy, Ross said he still feels the after-effects of the abuse: “I still can’t sleep in sleeping bags because I need to be able to get out.”

He has found solace in publicly sharing his story after connecting with the UK’s children’s charity NSPCC in 2024 via email.

Lucy Curtis, from the charity, told PA Real Life: “The honesty and the bravery that Ross shares about the path that this abuse took him on just really spoke to us.

“We just thought he’d be such a powerful advocate, especially for men who don’t disclose,” she added.

He is writing a book entitled Box On, due for release later this year. Ross is now an amateur boxing coach as a way of “giving back to the sport that gave so much” to him.

Ross said it is important for him to share his story because the more light shined on child sexual abuse, “the less shadows there are for these arseholes to hide in”.

He added: “I don’t want people to have to go through what I went through.

“I want them to realise that it’s OK.

“What happened to you was just a really awful thing that happened and it doesn’t define who you are.

“It doesn’t have to dictate what you do in the future,” he added.

To find out more about NSPCC, visit their website here: https://www.nspcc.org.uk/

A Victorian Department of Education spokesperson told PA Real Life: “We apologise unreservedly for failing to protect the victims of this teacher when they were students in the 1970s.

“Since that time, there has been a complete overhaul of the way schools identify and respond to child abuse, to prevent this from happening again.

“A range of supports are available to victim-survivors of abuse in Victorian government schools including redress and restorative engagement processes that can include a personalised acknowledgment and apology from a senior representative of the Department of Education or school.”