Mike Neville, with his wife Adele, says he will look at complaining about the way he was treated by the police. Picture / Mark Mitchell

Mike Neville, with his wife Adele, says he will look at complaining about the way he was treated by the police. Picture / Mark Mitchell

The teacher acquitted this week of four counts of indecently assaulting schoolgirls in his care is adamant he wants to return to the job but the wounds of the past 18 months are raw.

Officially Mike Neville, 48, is still employed by a Kapiti Coast school which cannot be named because of a court order.

Mr Neville believes he was unfairly treated by police who, he says, assumed his guilt before even speaking with him last year, then ran a six-week publicity campaign to try to draw out more victims.

Surrounded by family and friends at his home outside Levin yesterday, Mr Neville recalled the day the "bombshell" hit.

On June 24 last year, his friend the school board chairman asked him to come back to the school.

"They sat me down in the principal's office and the chair said the police had been to visit. There was an allegation of I think the term was sexual impropriety.

"I couldn't speak for a few minutes. I was just completely overwhelmed," said Mr Neville, a teacher for the previous eight years at the same school.

He was told the police wanted the school to suspend him, but with no detail of what exactly he was accused of, or by whom, it was not going to do that. Instead he was to tell no one, apart from his wife, and report for work as usual the next day.

"I went home and burst in through the door. I was just sobbing, trying to get out what had happened."

Over the next few weeks the principal called the police regularly seeking updates. But nearly two months went by before anything else happened. On August 11, the board chairman rang him at home to tell him he was suspended from the next day.

Passing on that advice was the chairman's last official duty. He resigned from the board the next day on the grounds that he was Mr Neville's friend, did not agree with what was happening and wanted to support him.

Sandra Moran, the Wellington lawyer recommended by the primary teachers union, the NZ Educational Institute, took action to get Mr Neville reinstated on the grounds that no charges had been laid.

A month later, on September 9, he returned to work. By that stage rumours were rife in the small school community.