Abuse Law – Institutions – Cranbrook School, NSW

In an ABC (Four Corners) news article in March 2024, it provided that the Cranbrook School headmaster, Mr Nichoals Sampson, resigned from his position at Cranbrook School following revelations that Mr Sampson kept a teacher on staff at Cranbrook School who had sent sexually explicit emails to a former female student. The teacher — who Four Corners is not naming — also boasted about looking up girls’ skirts in class and described lurid sexual fantasies about his students. The teacher was still working at Cranbrook School in early March 2024 and had been promoted. Cranbrook School confirmed on 8 March 2024 that the teacher had now been put on immediate leave pending an investigation. Four Corners can reveal the teacher’s emails — sent to his former student from a Catholic girls’ school where he had previously taught — were forwarded to NSW Police and seen by the Association of Independent Schools. Many of them are explicit and too graphic to print, however included:

“I fantasized [sic] about u and another girl in the class… 3 of us together, very hot,” the teacher wrote to his former student in 2014 when she was a young adult, referring to a fantasy involving intercourse. 

“… You get three guesses … someone from the yr 9 class.” 

When the former student, who was in Year 10 when the teacher left her school, suggests a particular girl, the teacher replies, “not [her]. Nice idea though”. 

“Yeah I would take [her] to bed too, very cute. Three of us would be sexy … give u a clue … tall girl.” 

Talking about the “tall girl”, the teacher says, “I remember she used to sit really low in her chair, legs so far apart … always could see what colour undies she had”. 

He then says that he has a fantasy of the former student he is emailing in a bikini, or “naked of course … u r my solid fantasy”. 

He also talks about how some of the girls at the school wore no underwear and he saw up their skirts and it was “Quite the eyeful”. 

“… [N]o girl forgets undies, then sits with legs apart. Just to tempt me … evil!” 

He says one girl “was waxing [her intimate parts] from at least year 11. Do you do that?” 

The teacher also jokes that his fan club among the girls was “probably big” and boasts that one girl, who is named, “wanted to, in her words, have me in the classroom, on the desk”.

Cranbrook School former headmaster, Mr Sampson, was informed about the teacher’s emails in June 2015 after the principal of the girls’ school became aware. The principal of the girls’ school had informed police. Mr Sampson received the information about two months before he admitted to the child abuse royal commission that he let an accused paedophile keep teaching at Victoria’s Geelong Grammar School for almost a year after being informed of allegations against him. Mr Sampson’s defence in the royal commission and to Four Corners was that times had changed, and he and society had learned much since 2004, when he allowed the accused paedophile, who was later convicted, to keep working at the school. But he received the emails sent by the Cranbrook School teacher in 2015 while the royal commission was running. Mr Sampson wrote to the teacher saying an investigation into the emails had been finalised and informing him that they did not amount to reportable conduct laws designed to protect children and that “there is no proposed employment action in relation to this matter”. 

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