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Allegations
of Sexual Abuse |
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A former school
principal told jurors yesterday that a teacher accused of raping a
seven-year-old girl at school was a favourite with students and ran a happy
classroom. "(He) was a
popular and loved teacher," the longtime school principal, called as a
defence witness, testified in Wellington District Court. The principal also said
she had once brought a dismissal action against the teacher for his failure
to keep good records, but that it had nothing to do with his behaviour with
children. "(He) had a rather
Peter Pan attitude toward record keeping," she said. The teacher is charged
with two counts of rape, one count of indecent assault and two counts of
assault, all stemming from incidents alleged to have taken place 10 years
ago, in 1996. He allegedly raped the girl
twice, once in a school corridor and once in his classroom office, molested
her in a bathtub at his house, kicked her, and shoved a couch on to her foot.
The girl's mother
testified earlier that she had reported at least one kick to the principal. Yesterday, the
principal said that in her 15 years at the school she had never heard
allegations of physical or sexual abuse about the accused or any other
teacher. "Children do not
get kicked by their teachers," she told jurors. "It would be so
unique that I'd remember it." The principal said such
allegations would have been treated very seriously. She also said the
hallway where one of the rapes allegedly occurred in the middle of a school
day was a busy, narrow corridor used by students, teachers and parents. The principal said the
now 17-year-old woman making the allegations was marginalised and had few
friends as a seven-year-old at the school. "She was the kind
of lass that even with 300 or 400 children in school, you were aware of her
being on the perimeter," she said. The girl left the
school part way through the year because she was unhappy and her mother
wanted to give her a fresh start, the principal said. Defence lawyer Paul
Paino has tried to paint a picture of a lonely girl, lost in a fantasy world,
who concocted her story from pieces of memory about a teacher she didn't
like. Taking the stand in his
own defence, the teacher testified Wednesday that he'd seen the girl years
after she left the school, and she shook her fist at him angrily. Crown prosecutor Mark
O'Donoghue cross-examined the teacher yesterday, trying to chip away at his
denials of the charges. The young woman and her
mother have insisted they only recently were able to put their recollections
together to arrive at the conclusion that the rapes occurred in 1996. The mother said had
seen blood and what looked like semen and pubic hair in her daughter's
underpants on multiple occasions but had not alerted school authorities or
police because she could not believe the girl had been raped. Name suppression has
been ordered in the case to protect the accused and the alleged victim.
Details that could identify the parties or the Wellington school where the
rape took place have also been ordered suppressed. The teacher has been on
leave from another school pending the outcome of the case. |
