Pupil suspended for slogan on website abusing teacher

A teenager has been suspended from school after posting a photograph of a teacher and his newborn son on a website - and then making degrading comments about the pair.

The student, from Tauranga Boys' College, found an online photograph of music teacher Nathan Geldard holding his six-month-old son. He then copied it on to the bebo website with a degrading slogan.

Last week, bebo was one of two sites investigated by the Herald on Sunday.

Bebo and satire site uncyclopedia were found to contain vicious abuse, bullying, accusations of sexual abuse against teachers and details such as names and phone numbers.

The sites had been flagged by the New Zealand School Trustees Association as the newest forms of "large-scale harrassment".

Mr Geldard said he was "gutted" about the incident. "I was devastated. It was taking something which to me is very personal and quite sentimental, and just trashing it. The stupid thing was the student actually had his name on the top of the page."

Mr Geldard said the student was stood down within a day and would not be allowed back until he and his parents met with the Board of Trustees.

The student, understood to be 15, apologised to Mr Geldard, saying he did not realise what he was doing and had meant it as "a bit of a laugh".

But Mr Geldard said other teachers at the school were also "shocked and hurt" by the incident.

Computer experts had since checked the site and also removed a post by a school representative which was thought to be inappropriate, Mr Geldard said.

Students could not access the site from school and, after senior exams finished, they would be spoken to about the importance of internet privacy. Mr Geldard said he was very pleased with the way management had handled the incident but was still concerned about the potential of cyber-bullying. "There's been the whole text-bullying [problem] but now there's this. It really did hurt."

Mr Geldard said he did not even know of the site until a junior student came to him last Wednesday and warned him of the page.

But when he tried to log in to bebo using his email address, he found it had already been used.

"Therefore, someone could be logging in as me. This starts to break rules of privacy and harrassment. I emailed bebo about this and they removed the image."

Many schools approached during last week's investigation had not heard of the site - although virtually every school in the country was listed on it, meaning anyone could log in as a 'student' and then create their own home page.

Tauranga Boys' College principal Graham Young said the school had dealt with Mr Geldard's complaint and it was time to move on.

"I was delighted with the responsibleness of the boys, once they recognised what was going on wasn't right."

Robert Minahan, school education manager for Netsafe, said the trend followed on from text bullying. "It's insulting and naming and shaming - it's similar to sending an offending text to someone."

"If anyone received a threat they could go to police," Mr Minahan said.