A post-primary school teacher who had sex with an 18-year-old Leaving Certificate student in the run-up to her exams after sharing explicit photos with her on Snapchat has been struck off the register of teachers.<\/p>\n
An inquiry panel of the Teaching Council also ruled that the teacher, who is in his 30s, cannot apply to have his name restored to the register for a minimum of 30 years due to the \u201cexceptional and disturbing\u201d findings against him.<\/p>\n
Chairwoman of the three-person panel, Clodagh O\u2019Hara, announced its determination on sanction on Friday after having found the teacher guilty earlier this month of professional misconduct over his inappropriate relationships with two female students at the school where he taught which she described as \u201csinister and disturbing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ms O\u2019Hara said all the findings against the teacher were \u201cat or very near the highest point on any spectrum of seriousness.\u201d She claimed his pattern of conduct was \u201cpredatory, manipulative, and abusive\u201d of both students at a time they were particularly vulnerable.<\/p>\n
The panel expressed concern that the risk of the teacher engaging in similar conduct towards other young or vulnerable people could not be discounted.<\/p>\n
The sanction followed evidence before a fitness to-each inquiry held in July in which details of the teacher\u2019s sexual relationship with a then 18-year-old student, known only as Miss A, were revealed including meetings in his car and apartment as well as the girl\u2019s family home.<\/p>\n
The inquiry also heard that the the teacher had engaged in \u201cpredatory\u201d behaviour with her best friend \u2014 a student identified as Miss B \u2014 when he kissed and touched her in a pub on their 6th year graduation night.<\/p>\n
A series of allegations of professional misconduct against the teacher, which were all proven, related to various times during the 2017\/18 school year. They also constituted breaches of the code of professional conduct for teachers.<\/p>\n
The inquiry panel directed that no information could be published which could identify either the teacher, the students or the school involved in the case.<\/p>\n
Ms O\u2019Hara said the teacher had initially contacted the two students on social media in ostensibly innocuous terms but the tone of his messages gradually became sexualised when they responded. She said his messages later became \u201cincreasingly lewd and obscene\u201d with his contact with Miss A quickly escalating into a sexual relationship which was usually accompanied by alcohol.<\/p>\n
Miss A gave evidence that she was \u201cna\u00efve and vulnerable\u201d when she recalled that he had sent her \u201cd**k pics\u201d of his penis and she had sent him nude photos in return.<\/p>\n
The inquiry, which arose following a formal complaint by Miss A, heard that he had also encouraged her to drink alcohol because it would make her \u201chorny.\u201d She also gave evidence that the teacher told her it would be \u201chot\u201d if they had sex while she was in her school uniform.<\/p>\n
Ms O\u2019Hara said the student had been harmed by the experience but to her credit had sought to address the matter including by reporting it to the Teaching Council and giving evidence to the inquiry.<\/p>\n
Two of the eight allegations related to the teacher\u2019s inappropriate behaviour with Miss B who recounted how he had slapped her behind several times on her graduation night as she was walking up a stairway.<\/p>\n
Ms B described how they later kissed in a dark corner and he subsequently sent her a message which stated: \u201cYou should have come back to mine.\u201d Ms O\u2019Hara said Ms B was confronted by the teacher in school after she had blocked him on social media and was frightened to the extent that she immediately unblocked him.<\/p>\n
Counsel for the Teaching Council, Neasa Bird BL, had called for the teacher to face the higher form of sanction of being struck off because of the \u201cextremely serious\u201d findings against him.<\/p>\n
Ms O\u2019Hara said the panel agreed with the view of the regulatory body that the findings against the teacher were fundamentally incompatible with him remaining as a registered teacher.<\/p>\n
The teacher, who did not attend the inquiry, was legally represented by solicitor Eoin McGlinchey, who said last week that his client had accepted that it was likely his teaching career was finished.<\/p>\n
Ms O\u2019Hara said the panel had sought to impose a fair and appropriate sanction which would send a message to the teacher and wider profession about the seriousness of its findings.<\/p>\n
She observed that any mitigation in the teacher\u2019s favour was \u201cvery limited.\u201d Ms O\u2019Hara said the panel were not persuaded by his solicitor\u2019s argument that he was also very young and relatively inexperienced as a teacher at the time.<\/p>\n
It also rejected Mr McGlinchey\u2019s submission that the teacher had effectively made admissions by not cross-examining witnesses.<\/p>\n
The panel criticised the teacher\u2019s lack of insight into his behaviour, while Ms O\u2019Hara noted that his teaching union representative had made a highly legalised submission that the students\u2019 version of events was not credible in their initial response to the complaint against him.<\/p>\n
The chairperson said the teacher\u2019s first acceptance of reality came last week when the panel heard he had accepted his teaching career was likely to be over, even though it was not accompanied by an expression of understanding or remorse or any level of insight.<\/p>\n
Ms O\u2019Hara said removing the teacher\u2019s name from the register and not allowing it to be restored for a specified period was \u201cthe sanction of last resort\u201d but no other measure could address the seriousness of the findings and the paramount consideration of protecting the public.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A post-primary school teacher who had sex with an 18-year-old Leaving Certificate student in the run-up to her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60278,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,2597,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-60277","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-education","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-latest-news","18":"tag-latestnews","19":"tag-main-news","20":"tag-mainnews","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-top-stories","23":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60277\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}