By GREG ANSLEY
CANBERRA - International tennis coach Gavin Hopper is today in jail awaiting sentence for a four-year sexual affair with a Melbourne schoolgirl amid new allegations of a secret payout to another of his former students.
Hopper, 48, who coached stars such as Mark Philippoussis, Monica Seles and Jason Stoltenberg,
runs a tennis academy with Wimbledon champion and two-time Davis Cup winner Pat Cash on the Gold Coast's Hope Island Resort.
Hopper faces up to five years jail on each of three counts of indecent assault, and three years for six counts of gross indecency committed against a girl under his authority.
The coach is also being publicly accused as a serial predator of teenage girls at Melbourne's elite Wesley College, founded by Methodists in 1865 and a bastion of spiritual, academic and sporting values.
Two of the school's staff and three former students will represent Australia at the Athens Olympics.
Hopper's crimes were committed as a physical education teacher at Wesley in the 1980s when, Melbourne's Herald-Sun reported yesterday, he had a series of affairs with teenage girls that one former student described as "the world's worst-kept secret".
The newspaper said a payment of more than A$100,000 ($110,000) had been made in 1988, a year after another victim left the college and took legal action against Hopper and Wesley.
The report said the affair with this girl, then 15, had continued for two years before Hopper had "two-timed" her by starting a relationship with the teenager whose complaints more than a decade later led to his convictions this week.
Wesley College principal Dr Helen Drennen yesterday confirmed a confidential agreement had been reached with a former student in 1988 but refused to disclose details.
"I would like to stress the matter was agreed confidentially to protect the interests and welfare of the student at the time," she told ABC radio.
The crimes for which Hopper has been convicted began at Wesley in 1985, when the girl was 14 and Hopper was both tennis teacher and fitness adviser to the Fitzroy AFL Club.
The affair continued until the girl finished school. The victim said she and Hopper had sex as many as 300 times.
Hopper intends to appeal.
