child protection issue

[blokethattries]

Looking opinions on this, if a teacher was being investigated and then arrested over grooming / abuse. Would you expect the school to inform parents of children who had been taught by him/her?

There a whole heap of reporting restrictions around this issue so I can see why.
Firstly there is the automatic anonymity for the complaint, as you’ve mentioned.
There is also anonymity for the teacher following their arrest up until the point of charge - this was introduced to protect teachers from malicious allegations.
Then there is the contempt of court act, which sets boundaries around reporting at various stages before and during the trial.
All of this is in place to maintain the integrity of the trial.

However the police will be investigating behind the scenes, seizing phones, computers etc and speaking to witnesses.

It’s a difficult one because of course you would want to know but it’s important for everyone that there is a criminal trial, properly prepared.

what's galling and hard to stomach is that the pictures etc had his face in them. yet he held his guilty plea untill thel last minute.

However, having eventually plead guilty i hope it means he pleads guilty early on when / if my sons (and one other) case gets to trial.

different scenario, your p7 teacher gets arrested for dealing drugs / pills / etc on site in school.
Would you expect to be told?

I wouldn’t expect the school to, because that’s the way society has moved. But I think they should have. And they should have made inquiries of all past children he had taught during the investigation, not just wait until he’s charged.

So many sexual abuse crimes are dropped because of a lack of corroboration but investigations fail to look at suspects as potentially serial offenders (which most of them are) so don’t go looking for evidence which could make a stronger case.

this is where I am with it. There is currently 2 cases from 6yrs ago 2 cases from 2yrs ago and 2 have just gone through the courts.

If there had been an investigation, even just the authorities contacting previous schools he worked in, maybe we could have had 1 court case with enough weight behind it for a proper sentance.

Absolutely not. Even asking that question risks polluting evidence and making it inadmissible. Unless you are trained in interviewing possible victims of abuse, you must not ask any questions like this. Any disclosure must come from them voluntarily.

The thing is, there likely would have been investigations behind the scenes in school. You will not have been informed of them though. This persons’s phone and devices would have been digitally examined for evidence of him contacting other children.
What sentence do you think should have been handed down?

You may remember that the BBC had to pay around £2M to Sir Cliff Richard a few years ago after revealing that he was under investigation for sexual assault. Some of the press and social media would have you believe that this judgement broke new ground legally. It didn't. It reiterated the long standing position that everyone has the right to privacy. This means that information that someone is under investigation can only be revealed if it is in the public interest (which, as the BBC forgot, is different to it being interesting to the public). Unless the school was asked to reveal the information to parents by the police, they would have been on very dodgy ground by doing so. If the teacher had not been charged, they may have had to pay him a significant sum in damages.

It is true that the information was in the public domain once he was charged and the case went to court, but then a different set of rules kick in. The case was then sub judice, which limits public discussion in order to ensure that the case is not prejudiced. The press understand the rules and have additional protection that is not available to others. If the school proactively sent information to parents at this stage, the head might have ended up charged with contempt of court.

The authorities have to be very careful with cases like this. Whilst publicity may result in additional victims coming forward, it also increases the likelihood of false allegations. That applies particularly when the victims are young children. There are a number of documented cases where well-meaning parents have unintentionally implanted false memories of sexual abuse. This leads to false allegations against the suspect which can end up weakening the case (if the defence can show that some allegations are false, the jury may be less inclined to believe the others). It also leads to unnecessary trauma for the children - similar to the trauma if they had actually been abused. As per my previous post, parents should not question children at all.

The sentence he has received is what I would expect for these offences. Additional victims probably wouldn't have made much difference to the sentence. Whilst the offence has a maximum sentence of 5 years, the details of this case do not put his offences into a category that would have led to a prison sentence.

This is exactly what we are taught not to do in our safeguarding training.
it is a leading question.

Honestly op . Asking leading questions like you suggest could make the entire case collapse ( as it should) and would
Simply not stand up in court .
I understand that you're thinking of the would have l, should have scenarios that might have prevented this from happening to your son but you're unlikely to get anywhere trying to involve the school as you're discovering .

The school will be following police advice. And I am sorry to say this, but the case of your son in their eyes isn’t worth looking into. The courts are ultimately a game and the PPS and police need to disorder public interest and likelihood of conviction and all that. Do what’s best for your child and if you have lost trust in the school - move him.

The person in question was in court again yesterday to be arraigned, media all quiet about it...

That is a leading question and what does uncomfortable mean to children? You’re opening a can of worms. The teacher has faced a trial so there is nothing for the school to comment on. They acted swiftly and appropriately at the time. It is not for individual teachers to encourage further conversations with the children about this.

that sounds like fishing for disclosures and would probably taint a fair trial

That's absolute rubbish. Noone said about quizzing, but there shouldn't be an avoidance of the topic. I'm guessing you don't have children, but parents with a healthy relationship are perfectly capable of having a conversation, it's not like trying to talk to students or whichever capacity you see children in.

No, it is not rubbish. I have children (although they are now grown up) and I have a healthy relationship with them. However, I have been involved in safeguarding long enough to know that, if there ever had been allegations concerning someone they knew, I should not raise the subject with them and that I should be very careful what I said or asked if they made allegations to me. There is too much risk of polluting evidence and making it inadmissible. As I said up-thread, there are several documented cases where well-meaning parents have unintentionally implanted false memories of sexual abuse. This leads to unnecessary trauma for the child and potentially false allegations against the suspected abuser which, if they are genuinely an abuser, may end up weakening the case against them.