Seven-year-old girls looked for ‘naked boys’ on internet
A TEACHER at a £10,000-a-year (€11,100) English girls’ prep school was sacked after he gave six and seven-year-olds free rein to search the internet, only for them to look up pornography, an employment tribunal has heard.
The young pupils searched for “the queen’s underwear” and “naked boys” on their school computers during a lesson from newly qualified teacher Werner Nel.
When Mr Nel realised what they were trying to do, he closed down the files and later allegedly tried to delete the search history before his bosses discovered what had been happening during his class.
The tribunal heard however that senior staff found out about the web searches after some girls told their parents they had seen “willies” at school.
The fee-paying Brockhurst and Marlston House Preparatory School, near Newbury, in Berkshire, was being sued for public interest disclosure, unfair dismissal and breach of contract by Mr Nel, who was sacked from his job as IT teacher after an internal investigation.
HR manager Rachel Harper said Mr Nel, who lives in Hermitage, had told a co-worker about the incident while waiting in the lunch queue but downplayed its severity, saying the pupils had only found images of “people in their underwear”.
She said: “We went straight to the search history and saw that a search had been made for ‘naked boys’.
“We clicked on it immediately and without doubt what was displayed on screen was multiple images of hardcore pornography involving men.
“Unfortunately, there were some of small boys mixed in with them.
“My immediate thought was that I could not believe a teacher who saw these images did not instantly push a big red safeguarding button. I was shocked at the images.”
The employment tribunal in which Mr Nel is suing his former school employers continues.