Controversies
In 1971 a Trinity student sued the school and one of its masters, claiming that he had been caned excessively. Colin Morris, 15, said that his buttocks were sore for three days, and bruised for three weeks, after receiving six strokes of the cane. The judge threw the case out, saying that the punishment had been reasonable, and added, "The salutary effect of the infliction of pain on a schoolboy, experience might show, justifies the reasonable use of this form of chastisement on healthy teenage boys."
Between 1984 and 1988 a senior school Mathematics teacher, Mr R. Doyle, was accused of sexually abusing two students who had been undertaking private tutoring with him on school grounds. Mr Doyle eventually pleaded guilty and was sentenced in 1997, long after his dismissal from the school.
In 2000, a group of Year 10 boarding students assaulted a boy several times using a large wooden dildo made in a woodwork class, which the students called the "Anaconda". Three students were expelled by the school and convicted of various offences as minors. Compensation payments to two victims of bullying at the school are likely to have been approximately $1 million. It was alleged that the school had a culture of bullying A film loosely based on the incident, Boys Grammar, was produced in 2005. Academics now quote this case, and the school's attempts to minimise public awareness and perceived damage to it, in studies in this area.
Trinity's plan to bulldoze eleven of the seventeen houses it owns bordering the school grounds, in order to build a swimming pool, multi-purpose hall, classroom block and underground carpark, was approved by the NSW Land and Environment Court in November 2007. The single Ashfield Councillor who supported the application was an alumnus of the school, and described his fellow Councillors as "envious" and "a pathetic bunch of people".
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