Male School staff inappropriate behaviour towards DD

Someone with your writing skills has no business teaching anyone. See? Works both ways.

Someone with your reading comprehension skills has no business teaching anyone.

I am sorry about your experience. And it wasn't always like this. I've been a teacher for nearly 30 years, and things have changed.

Shocking things still happen though. TRA records show that there are still a lot of adults who should not be in schools.

I am so sorry.

I hope this will be resolved. Please reassure her she did the right thing in reporting.

What actually happened is that the member of staff to whom the disclosure was made went to the Head, which is the correct response. The Head will instigate an investigation and likely (given the nature of the allegation) report to the LADO. As a deputy head I carried out investigations. Every allegation or concern reported was investigated. That is what happens.

TheFallenMadonna
i think suspending teachers was the knee jerk reaction in those days. Hopefully there is now a more measured approach. It was complicated in one of the cases by this being pointed out to the child and them changing their story to implicate a different staff member. However by this time all concerned realised this was all made up and the child (a year 5/6 I think) caved. It was awful for the accused though.

People aren't saying anything of the sort. The debate about false allegations came about because someone said that they had safeguarding on how to avoid this and I questioned how it would as false allegations are malicious as it wouldn't and then debating how rare it is.

At no point has anyone said anything about the child in question. It was a secondary debate relating to the training and how common it was. It wasn't in relation to the OPs child.

Teachers can debate things that impact on them and their safeguarding. Safeguarding applies to ALL not just children.

Nope, wrong!

Christ.

To be honest, stats don't lie. Men abusing women and girls is rife. False accusations are anecdotal. It's quite unsurprising that most people would think that it's most likely that his intentions weren't good. There will be an impartial investigation, as there should be, and hopefully the truth will be found. But frankly, why would OP's DD lie? And why would the staff member act in this way?

Yes I agree. What's your point?

Not being in on the day in question is pretty quick and easy to ascertain. Why were they suspended?

Your first sentence was at the very very least, he has behaved extremely stupidly and needs a bucketload of retraining

That is an assumption of guilt on some level.

Unforgivable from somebody who has worked in schools.

There were two separate allegations against my colleagues in a primary school many years ago. Both teachers were suspended immediately and the LEA sent in an investigation team who talked to both teachers and the children involved. Both were exonerated completely, the children concerned both said happily when it was pointed out that neither teacher was actually working that day that they had made it up because they were cross. Neither teacher taught again, they were so horrified. False allegations have always happened sadly.

False accusations (anywhere in the world) are much rarer than real abuse.

That’s not a false accusation. That’s just kids being stupid in general, as we all were when we went to school back in the day.
If a student made a formal complaint like that, they would not be taken seriously on resource allocation grounds. We receive regular training at our private school from the police and former social services specialists and that’s not the kind of thing they look for.

The scenario in the original post however is a classic case study of many red flags however, specifically the request for private phone numbers, suggesting meeting up after school and one on one meetings possibly outside of the knowledge of senior teachers. That definitely would definitely be looked into at our school, with external agencies supporting.

@FloatingSquirrel its a very lovely thought you’ve had there, but sadly it’s very naive. It is asking for trouble. It leaves the male member of staff very vulnerable to false accusation, or worse, exposes the female child to potential risk. Don’t you think it would be common sense, when you weigh up benefit vs risk, just to not bother? It’s common sense.

You might not like it, but it's true.

@FloatingSquirrel don't give me that.

By definition you can't do anything about being falsely accused. It's about luck not what you've done.
One of the staff members at our DDs secondary gets called a pedo/creep by the DC, when I've asked her and her friends why they've all just shrugged and said the boys say he is and that he tries to be cool by making maths jokes and has a weird voice.
From when I've met him at parents evening he seems quite shy and geeky but very dedicated to teaching. Doesn't seem to be any wrongdoing that I can pick up on or the DC can describe but there's still that being said about him.

False accusations can happen in any school.

That’s concerning.

It can be very beneficial, especially for girls who don't have a positive male figure at home.

I have worked with people like you, who seem to believe that it couldn’t happen in your school, or it couldn’t be nice Mr Brown your friend in the Drama department. It’s not up to you to decide: ALL allegations must be investigated and if you’ve taken the sensible steps to protect yourself, you’ll be fine. Some kids lie. Many don’t. In 20 years I have never been falsely accused because I have always followed the rules.

@heatherwithapee why are the school pairing male staff with female pupils for one to ones. Ridiculous.