A former Correspondence School student, who told police a teacher raped her, has accused the school of delaying tactics over the incident she complained about 10 months ago.
She is one of two students who told the school last December - and in follow-up police statements - that a teacher raped them in separate incidents.
The teacher has subsequently resigned and been deregistered by the Teachers Council.
The school - New Zealand's largest with 20,000 students and 500 teachers - has never told its students, their parents or the public about the allegations, except to say it was investigating first one, and later two, students' complaints that a teacher sent them inappropriate images.
The student Jessica (not her real name) said she was speaking out in frustration at the school's attempts to cover up the alleged rapes and delays in the police investigation.
"The school has treated me as if I was a liability - a nightmare that they wanted to placate and sweep under the carpet," she said.
The teacher was Jessica's online tutor when she was aged 16 in 2002.
After she met him twice in person that year he began sending sexually suggestive emails - including photos of himself having sex with various women, Jessica says.
In January last year, after the school year had finished and he was no longer her teacher, he visited her in her home town and made sexual overtures. She refused them.
Jessica has told police a consensual sexual relationship began in July last year.
But in two statements to police in April this year she also alleged the teacher forced her to have sex and raped her.
She developed a urinary tract infection from her first unprotected sex with him. One weekend he took her to an out-of-town conference and stayed at a motel, claiming she was his daughter.
In a police statement Jessica said: "He was a teacher so I thought I could trust him."
Jessica said in March this year she had to get a lawyer to write to the school asking it to tell her the status of her complaint.
With the exception of one dean, she believed the school had failed to support her.
"I went from an 'A' student at university to ending up in hospital after trying to kill myself and on a cocktail of anti-depressants," she said.
"If this is how people are treated when they stand up and say they have been raped, it is little wonder why so many put up with abuse and never bother to report it."
- NZPA
Pupil accuses teacher of rape
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