Former St Pius X teacher Ted Hall, on trial for alleged child sex abuse, faces Newcastle District Court

The evidence of Edward Smith Hall, better known as Ted Hall, who was part of a Catholic school regime where the cane was doled out as a routine punishment and fist fights were a part of life in the school quadrangle, was a lie, Crown prosecutor Kristy Mulley said.

He disagreed with answers that he gave to police during an interview in 2019, and gave detailed and elaborate answers in court to designed to create a favourable impression and an air of plausibility, she said.

In summing up the case against Hall, who is accused of two counts of indecent assault on a child 48 years ago in 1974, Ms Mulley said he was deliberately obscure to divert attention away from the propositions being put to him.

"Sometimes his evidence was plainly untrue," she said.

The complainant, who cannot be named, said he felt sure that Hall had a conversation with then school principal, Hunter priest Tom Brennan, better known as Father Brennan, to have him expelled before he had an opportunity to disclose details of the crimes committed against him.

He said being unfairly expelled had a devastating effect, causing trauma for both him and his family.

Father Brennan made international news as the first Australian Catholic priest charged with concealing another priest's child sex crimes in the 1970s. He died of cancer six weeks later, before the charges were determined in court.

The complainant said he was sexually assaulted on a trip away with Hall to a property where he was driven to a secluded location, where Hall allegedly squeezed the boys genitals after making up a story about showing him pressure points on the boy's body.

He described that after the accused touched him that he looked off into the distance into the hills thinking 'Christ, where am I, and what just happened'.

Ms Mulley said Hall had a tendency to feel sexually attracted to males in a similar age bracket, all students at St Pius, a tendency to act on that, and a specific tendency to take them away on weekends, on camping and shooting trips, to create an opportunity to do so.

He assaulted five other boys in the same way, she said, in the early 70s.

He abused his position of authority over young students and exploit them for his own sexual gratification.

In summing up the defence case, barrister Terry Healey said there were no such offences, and the accused denied they ever occurred.

He said the passage of time had led to a "significant forensic disadvantage" with no opportunity to obtain alibi evidence, or records that might have been kept at that stage to illustrate what Hall might have been doing, 48 years ago on June 26.

"It's almost an impossibility without access to receipts, to telephone records, to other persons who can corroborate your presence with them at a game of football or overseas ... it's such a difficulty," he said.

Judge Ian Bourke will his verdict in the judge-alone trial in Newcastle District Court on April 12.

Editors note: an earlier version of this story featured an incorrect photo.

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