A fitness-to-teach inquiry has heard testimony from a former Leaving Certificate student of how a teacher picked her up from her estate after school and brought her to the driveway of an old factory.
“He wanted to have sex, I wasn’t sure. I remember trying to get over to the driver’s side, I remember the clunkiness of it,” the witness told the inquiry on Wednesday.
She has complained to the Teaching Council that while she was an 18-year-old student, a teacher at her school had sexual encounters with her on four to six occasions between March and June 2018.
The complainant also alleges that she and the teacher sent communications to each other on Snapchat, the social media app, many of which were of a sexually explicit nature, including photos of a penis and nude photos of the complainant.
The teacher, who was not present, submitted that the complainant’s case was a weak one which lacked detail. He submitted the case contained inconsistencies regarding dates, that the complainant had narrowed the date range on which the sexual encounters occurred on to between March and April 2018, and he noted the complainant said the sexual relationship was consensual.
The teacher, who has been registered since 2016 taught in the school for five years. He is now working at another school and submitted that he has “an exemplary record of service in both schools”.
The complainant alleged that after speaking with her best friend and classmate, she found out the teacher was also sending inappropriate messages to her, messages which he had also sent to the complainant.
The complainant further related how at the time of the allegations she was not in a positive mental state. She said she was drinking alcohol, had issues with food and that two years previously was hospitalised and that the teacher was aware of her mental health issues.
She outlined a pattern of deleting the teacher from Snapchat and adding him again if she was struggling and as a means of coping. She felt he had a duty of care to her as a student and that he took advantage of her poor judgment. She said he encouraged her drinking and he sometimes provided her with cigarettes when he would pick her up in his car close to her home.
She said while she did okay in her Leaving Certificate, her experiences that year with the teacher had an effect on her. She told how days before the exams she forwarded a letter to her best friend which outlined some details of the behaviour between herself and the teacher, but not the sexual nature of it as the teacher had convinced her not to.
Neasa Bird, BL for the director of the Teaching Council, said that it is her client’s contention that there is a prima-facie case of professional misconduct and a breach of the Code of Professional Conduct for Teachers.
The complainant, with the assistance of a trusted friend, previously submitted videos to the Teaching Council of her scrolling down through some of the Snapchat communications she had saved.
The complainant also said the teacher’s behaviour was manipulatory, that he had groomed her before having a sexual relationship with her.
She related how the teacher provided her with a study plan when she was struggling with her mental health even though he was not one of her teachers. However, she felt this intervention was a tactic on his part to reassert him as a responsible adult, another method of gaining her trust.
She related how she first came into contact with him when she obtained two lessons of additional tuition from him in August 2017, when she was 17. She said he added her, accidentally he said, on Snapchat that October.
The complainant had turned 18 the previous month.
She said a message from the teacher to her on Facebook, even though they were not Facebook friends, in December 2022 offering his congratulations to her on graduating from university spurred her to make her complaint to the Teaching Council.
It was decided at a preliminary hearing that there would be no disclosure of the name of the school or of any information which would reveal the identity of any witnesses. The panel also ruled today that this order of anonymity would not extend to the name of the teacher.
The inquiry will reconvene on Tuesday, July 15th.