Teacher facing serious misconduct allegations at Teachers Disciplinary Tribunal regrets discussing rape with students

The teacher conceded she could have been more careful with her language. Photo / 123rf

A reliever teacher who talked with young students about rape has acknowledge she should have been more careful with her words.

The 18-year teaching veteran was called in to cover for several days at an intermediate school but her conduct quickly garnered multiple complaints from concerned parents after their children came home talking about her behaviour.

The woman, who has interim name suppression, is now accused of serious misconduct before the Teachers Disciplinary Tribunal which this week convened in Palmerston North to hear evidence from children at two schools where she briefly taught in 2021 and 2022.

Today, the teacher told the tribunal that at one school the conversation moved onto topics the class had covered in the previous term like the Māori land wars.

“I get very emotional about these topics, they hit close to home for me.”

She said that she did bring up rape as something she mentioned in the context of colonisation.

“On reflection, I realised I shouldn’t have been so explicit,” she said.

“I do accept that some of the comments could have been jarring to the children and I should have been more careful in my choice of words and steered the conversation elsewhere.”

The mother of one of the students told the tribunal that her son came from school in a strange mood and told her the teacher had been talking about rape.

The Teachers Disciplinary Tribunal convened in Palmerston North today. Photo / Jeremy Wilkinson

“He told me about the comments and that they had freaked him out,” she said, “He was quite confused and upset.

“He literally cried himself to sleep that night and the following night.”

Other allegations being heard by the tribunal include the woman allegedly telling students they would end up in a “n****r gang” if they misbehaved, threatening to shoot them and talking about gangs and violence.

The teacher said she didn’t bring up the topic of gangs, but rather students in the class were being rowdy and were pointing out other students who they believed had family members who belonged to a gang.

“This led to a conversation about gangs, but I tried to move the conversation on by explaining that gangs began as a kind of brotherhood.

“It was only more recently that gangs became more violent.

“I was trying to use it as a way of explaining we all come from different backgrounds.”

Several students at one of the schools have claimed in evidence that the teacher threatened to give the class a “hiding” if they didn’t behave.

“She told us her family was in a gang, and that her husband had killed the people who had killed her mum,” one student claimed.

However, the teacher denied that in her statement to the tribunal and said that most of her family were teachers or otherwise gainfully employed in other professions. None of them were gang members.

Another aspect of the charges against the teacher is that she didn’t inform one of the schools about the fact she had conditions placed on her teaching registration due to an incident in 2018. That was dealt with by a Complaints Assessment Committee of the Teaching Council and was not elevated to the tribunal, however, the facts of that incident are subject to an interim suppression order.

The woman told the tribunal she didn’t intend to wilfully mislead the school and did not fully understand that she needed to inform future employers about those conditions.

The tribunal will issue its decision on liability and penalty in writing at a later date.

Jeremy Wilkinson is an Open Justice reporter based in Manawatū covering courts and justice issues with an interest in tribunals. He has been a journalist for nearly a decade and has worked for NZME since 2022.