Teacher ‘unaware’ about risks of student sexual abuse

A former teacher avoided paying more than $2 million to students for sexual misconduct five decades ago after a judge found he was unaware his behavior was harmful at the time.

Helga Lam claimed he sexually assaulted multiple students while teaching languages ​​at a school in Sydney’s eastern suburbs in 1978 and 1979.

On Friday, a NSW Supreme Court judge found that by civil standards the harassment had occurred but that the 71-year-old was not negligent and did not know at the time that his behavior was harmful.

“In my experience, things were different some 50 years ago,” Judge Ian Harrison wrote in his decision.

“This does not reflect well the ill-informed standards of today in this country. But these are the standards by which Ms. Lam’s obligation to foresee that her conduct posed a risk of mental harm to the plaintiffs must be assessed.”

Lam, who has always denied that any sexual abuse took place, was arrested in 2021.

However, the charges against her were dismissed in July 2024 after the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal ruled that she could not be tried because of her gender.

The court ruled that the relevant 1970s law, which was repealed in 1984, applied only to men who molested boys.

Four students have filed a civil claim against the NSW government in the NSW Supreme Court, seeking compensation.

They eventually reached a $2.5 million settlement

Admitting that she had violated her duty towards men, the state then went after Ms. Lam and sought a court order that she was obliged to pay a significant portion of this money.

On Friday, Judge Harrison found that the school where Lam worked in the 1970s should have been aware of the psychological consequences students experienced after sexual abuse by an adult.

However, although the judge found that the school was negligent, he did not make the same findings for Ms. Lam.

“There is no evidence before me to support the allegation that Ms. Lam should have been aware of or knowledgeable about the effects of sexual intercourse between adults and minors,” he wrote.

The judge ruled that two of the agreements the state government reached with the students were reasonable.

But the remaining two were not, as they were almost $600,000 higher than the amounts estimated in the earlier legal analysis.

But if Ms. Lam had been negligent, Judge Harrison said he would have ordered her to pay 35 percent of the $2.5 million settlement amount.

Although he refrained from attacking his students, per his contract with the school, he realized that his authority and control were limited.

The judge said the school had greater responsibility and failed to launch an investigation into the harassment despite two complaints to the principal.

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