The Victorian Education Department sent unqualified teachers into classrooms in the 1960s and then failed to sack them following reports they were sexually abusing their students, according to recently discovered documents.

In an unpublished memoir obtained by ABC Investigations, former Macleod High School principal Athol Jones claimed that the Victorian Education Department appointed “morally reprehensible” trainee teachers to the school in the late 1960s and that a senior department executive failed to terminate the employment of one when Jones passed on complaints that the teacher was sexually abusing female students.

The long-buried scandal is now the subject of legal action against the Victorian government.

In September, a Supreme Court writ was served by a survivor alleging horrific sexual abuse by former Macleod High School teacher Peter Gerrard Jackman.

The woman’s lawyer, Aleksandar Dukovski of Arnold Thomas & Becker, confirmed to ABC Investigations she is suing for the pain and suffering she has endured after Jackman allegedly raped and abused her repeatedly in 1969 — abuse the woman says only stopped after she fell pregnant to Jackman.