Teacher stripped of registration over relationship with student

Kelsey Rebekah Allen was a PE and health teacher at Morrinsville College when she started a relationship with an 18-year-old student, Stuff.co.nz reported. Photo / Thinkstock

A teacher who had a three-month sexual relationship with a student during which they sent each other thousands of intimate text messages has been stripped of her registration.

Kelsey Rebekah Allen was a physical education and health teacher at Morrinsville College in 2014 when she started a relationship with an 18-year-old student, Stuff.co.nz reported.

Allen, 24, was a newly-graduated teacher when she started at the school and the tribunal heard that the relationship with the student involved kissing, oral sex and sexual intercourse. It started when Allen started counselling the student -- a role she admitted she was not adequately trained for.

The pair were eventually outed by the student's jilted school-aged girlfriend.

At a hearing before the New Zealand Teachers' Disciplinary Tribunal on Wednesday Allen was censured and stripped of her teacher registration, Stuff.co.nz reported.

The tribunal were shown examples of the texts sent by Allen to the student between August and November last year.

"Of course I was going to fall for you.. Why wouldn't I! You're incredible you are so hot.. Everytime I see you I just wanna kiss you ...," one text said.

"...[you're] the cutest sleeper! You made little noises.. How do you know me so well it's been like a couple of months."

At the hearing Morrinsville College principal John Inger said Allen contacted him on Friday to apologise, saying she had made poor decisions.

"She told me that if there were more time and if she could sit down with me, she could try to explain how things occurred," Stuff.co.nz reported him saying at the hearing.

"I, having heard a few days earlier an admission [by Allen] of sexual misconduct, I was quite cold with her in the conversation because she told me lies right from the outset."

He said the young teacher initially denied any type of sexual relationship, claiming reports of the relationship had been fabricated.

Allen did not attend the hearing. Her lawyer Dzintra King told the tribunal Allen was under stress at the time of the relationship because her grandfather was sick and a long-term relationship had ended.

"This isn't a situation where there has been any predatory behaviour, she hasn't gone out of her way to do this, there has been a series of misfortunate circumstances where... after receiving a number of texts from this boy, she succumbed," Ms King said.