Brighton Secondary College’s principal has told the Federal Court he did his best to limit a proliferation of hate symbols graffitied around his school, telling staff to remove dozens of swastikas as they were detected.
Principal Richard Minack oversees a school that has been accused of failing to protect Jewish students under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Racial Discrimination Act.
Five former students – brothers Joel and Matt Kaplan, Liam Arnold-Levy, Guy Cohen and Zack Snelling – are suing the government-run school and the state of Victoria for negligence and allegedly failing to protect them under the convention and the act.
Their lawyer, barrister Adam Butt, has told the court the school failed in its duty of care for the students and that the “state has been vicariously liable for this”.
Earlier this month a witness to the Federal Court proceedings accused Minack of legitimising anti-Semitism at the school with a speech in which he referred to Jews as subhuman.
On Monday, the court was told this comment came in the form of a speech Minack made in 2019 which attempted to highlight that racist conduct was broader than simply acts of racial violence.
Chris Young, QC, acting for the state of Victoria and its employees, pressed expert witness Professor Emeritus Suzanne Rutland, who wrote a report critical of the school’s response to the repeated claims students had made of anti-Semitism at the school.
Read the article by Bianca Hall in The Age.