5 days ago
Jury verdict in trial of former Hobart teacher Keith Bates-Willie
A Supreme Court jury has found a 71-year-old former Hobart teacher and theatre director guilty of raping and indecently assaulting a number of former students.
WARNING: This story includes descriptions of child sexual abuse, which some readers may find distressing.
Keith Athol Bates-Willie was charged with 14 crimes, including aggravated sexual assault, rape, four counts of persistent sexual abuse of a child, and eight charges of indecent assault.
The Supreme Court in Hobart heard the abuse happened to a number of students while Mr Bates-Willie was a teacher at three separate southern Tasmanian schools between the late 1970s and the early 2000s — Rosetta High, Kingston High and Rosny College.
During the three-week trial, the court heard from 16 different men who gave evidence about being groped, assaulted, and fondled by Bates during theatre rehearsals, at dinner parties, in costume rooms and while being driven home from school.
It was the Crown's case that Bates had a sexual interest in male students he taught or met at school, and had a tendency to act on that sexual interest and to groom males in order to gain a close relationship with them.
