A group of Jewish students at a Melbourne school were referred to as subhuman amid an anti-Semitic culture of taunts, violence and swastika graffiti, the Federal Court has heard.
Five former students – brothers Joel and Matt Kaplan, Liam Arnold-Levy, Guy Cohen and Zack Snelling – are suing the government-run Brighton Secondary College and the state of Victoria for negligence and failing to protect them under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Racial Discrimination Act.
Barrister Adam Butt, speaking on behalf of the applicants, told the court the students suffered a range of anxiety disorders due to their treatment and four of the five left the school mid-year due to a “dehumanising” environment. Two failed to finish their VCE studies.
“The essential position of all my clients was they didn’t feel they could be openly Jewish at this school unless they were prepared to suffer intolerable treatment at the hands of students, teachers or the principal,” Butt told the court.
“The Racial Discrimination Act is supposed to be about human dignity, but there has not been dignity for my clients in any of these cases.”
He claimed the school failed in its duty of care for the students and that the “state has been vicariously liable for this”.
Read the article by Nicole Precel in The Age.