Gavin Morris: Former school principal guilty of assaulting Indigenous students
A headmaster who put Indigenous school students into choke holds and painfully twisted their ears has been found guilty of four counts of aggravated assault.
Former principal Gavin Morris was on Wednesday found not guilty by Judge Anthony Hopkins on one aggravated assault count in the Alice Springs Local Court.
Morris was appointed head at the bilingual Yipirinya School for Indigenous children in Alice in 2022.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.Reports emerged of him assaulting boy students aged between eight and 13 in 2023, sparking a police investigation.
Judge Hopkins found the application of force by Morris could not be justified as defensive conduct or to discipline, manage or control children.
He said the evidence given by the boys, their fellow students, teachers, teaching assistants and parents during the hearings was largely credible.
The judge found the first count proved Morris had pulled a 12-year-old boy from a playground fight and put him in a headlock that hurt him, constricted his breathing and made him feel afraid.
The boy’s parents were angered and upset by the treatment of their son who refused to return to the school.
Two other proven aggravated assault charges related to Morris grabbing two young boys by the ears and painfully twisting them after they made a mess with paint and glitter in a childcare centre.
An assistant teacher who witnessed the incident gave evidence she was so shocked she suffered a panic attack and felt unable to intervene.
A fourth proven charge was that an angry Morris choked a boy who had accessed a locked school hall with another student.
The assaulted boy gave evidence Morris had called them “little black c***s” and he felt afraid he could not breathe in the choke hold.
The fifth unproven charge related to the alleged choking of an 11-year-old boy in a classroom, with student witnesses giving evidence Morris had called them “black dogs”.
The judge said he could not return a guilty verdict on that count because of a conflict of evidence between two witnesses and the absence of any other significant corroboration.
Judge Hopkins continued bail for Morris and scheduled sentencing submissions for December 8.
