Police ruin teacher’s life

Stuff reports:

Intermediate school students admitted they lied that their teacher indecently assaulted girls so he would be fired after yelling at them in class, a court heard.

The admission came when two students gave evidence in court after police charged the teacher.

Despite the admissions that they made the story up, the teacher has lost his job and feels a 40 year career is in ruins. 

Why has he lost his job? Surely its the students that should be leaving the school, not the teacher?

A boy who initially claimed he witnessed the indecencies admitted there had been a plan to make up stories about the teacher to get him fired after he had told them off during class for misbehaving and being disrespectful.

“I joined in because my friends were there and I wanted to support them and because I didn’t really want to put up with any of that other stuff,” he said. 

The two other girls continued to claim they had been indecently assaulted and the crown said there was no evidence of collusion between the students.

The jury at the six day trial in the Auckland District Court in March took less than an hour to find the teacher not guilty on all charges.

So it actually went to trial and a verdict. He had to spend a week in court.

The teacher admits that on March 23, 2017 he lost his temper in class after students began painting their hands and arms black. 

He swore at the students, and there was a tense standoff in the classroom.

That, Corlett says, is when the students devised a plan to get the teacher fired. Within days they had made their complaint to a fellow teacher and police began investigating. The teacher was charged in July.

Outside of court Corlett said it was clear the accusations were false.

“It was obvious from the video interview that were conducted by the police of two of the complainants and two so-called ‘eye-witnesses’ that their stories were hopelessly vague, inconsistent and implausible.

“They were irreconcilable with each other,” Corlett said.

“Hundreds of hours of police resources and six days of jury time were wasted getting to what were inevitable not-guilty verdicts – all of which could have been avoided had the police approached the allegations with a healthy scepticism instead of swallowing whole what were obviously false accounts, Corlett said. 

The job of Police is to consider the evidence, not just accept allegations as truth. If the witnesses had inconsistent and implausible accounts, then the job of Police is to take that into account.