Teacher serving Australia's longest abuse sentence gets 7.5 years for schoolgirl assaults

Two schoolgirls suffered sexual abuse and lasting psychological harm; one victim experienced prolonged isolation and emotional distress described as being in a 'dark place for a very long time.'

Across four decades, two schoolgirls carried the weight of what a trusted teacher did to them in silence — a silence that courts have now, at last, formally broken. William Gilfillan, already serving Australia's longest child sexual abuse sentence for crimes against his own daughter, received an additional seven-and-a-half years for assaults committed at a Gippsland high school in the 1980s, the new term running concurrently with a sentence he will almost certainly never outlive. The judge was clear that the arithmetic of punishment was beside the point: what mattered was that the law had look

Teacher serving Australia's longest abuse sentence gets 7.5 years for schoolgirl assaults

Related Coverage

Get The Register in your inbox