Teacher jailed 25 years later

Remorseless paedophile Allan Keith Huggins remained unrepentant yesterday, responding to a nine-year and three-month jail term imposed by a Perth judge by shouting that there had been a “miscarriage of justice”.

State prosecutor Bernard Standish said his crimes were one of the most egregious examples of child sex abuse against vulnerable victims in WA.

But Huggins, a former teacher and counsellor, vowed to appeal as a security guard led him from the dock.

Victims and their supporters in the District Court public gallery scoffed in disbelief at the 68-year-old’s protests before embracing outside the court in a show of relief.

Colin Watterson and Robert McAuley, both subjected to Huggins’ abuse about 25 years ago, spoke of the years that their complaints were not believed.

Mr Watterson said children needed to know it was “OK to say no” and if they believed they were being abused mentally or physically, they should tell their parents.

“To all the parents out there, please note this is an issue that has to be addressed and child abuse needs to be stopped,” he said.

Huggins will spend at least seven years and three months behind bars before he can apply for parole.

He was convicted of 16 child sex offences against seven teenage boys after a three-week jury trial this year.

The abuse was committed between April 1990 and April 1991 at the Warminda school for troubled boys in Victoria Park.

Judge Troy Sweeney accepted an assessment which placed Huggins at a low risk of reoffending, but said the sentence had to send a message that child abuse was abhorrent and would not be tolerated in a civilised society.

She said Huggins was highly intelligent and his victims had been vulnerable.

He was well aware that the troubled teenagers he abused would not necessarily be believed had they complained.

“This is yet another case of a person in a teaching capacity who has the supervision of vulnerable, needy children taking advantage of that position for his own sexual gratification,” Judge Sweeney said.