Accused teacher: ‘I was trying to help’

AFife teacher accused of arranging to meet a teenage girl for sex has told a panel that he was trying to protect a potential child victim.

Religious education teacher Iain Parkinson, 56, turned up at the Travelodge in Falkirk expecting to meet a couple he had been chatting to on the Fabswingers website only to be handcuffed by undercover police.

Officers who searched Mr Parkinson found condoms and tubes of lubricant in his vehicle.

It followed what Mr Parkinson described as a “horrific” online exchange with an undercover officer which referred to sexual activity with a 14-year-old girl.

Mr Parkinson told a General Teaching Council for Scotland panel, who will decide if he should be struck off, that he was trying to snare a potential child abuser.

Instead, he ended up being entrapped himself.

“I wanted to know if these really were people doing something, and not just people who would talk about horrible things,” he told the panel.

“My intention was protect that child.”

Mr Parkinson resigned from his post at Kirkcaldy High School in June 2016, shortly after his arrest.

He said: “I was trying to do a good thing and it went stupidly and spectacularly wrong, potentially bringing a huge amount of embarrassment to the school.”

Mr Parkinson was asked why he did not report the matter to police when the online conversation started to refer to illegal acts.

“I didn’t want to go outside of the discreet system of reporting on Fabswingers, really because unless I had absolute proof of it, that this was really something horrible happening to somebody to real, I wasn’t prepared easily to admit to being on Fabswingers, to cheating on my wife, to letting down my family,” he said.

“It’s not particularly admirable, I know, but I didn’t want to break cover without being certain.”

Mr Parkinson graduated with a theology degree from St Andrews University before qualifying as a teacher in the mid-1990s.

Taking classes in religious education and classics, Mr Parkinson was once voted “most approachable teacher” by pupils and was involved in helping students from poorer backgrounds gain access to university.

Mr Parkinson faced criminal charges but the case was dropped after a sheriff said he had been a victim of entrapment.

He said undercover police he was unknowingly chatting to on the Fabswingers site had mentioned a daughter on a number of occasions.

“I didn’t respond to that. I have no sexual interest in children at all,” he said.

“We moved on and they started talking about what if she came in the room, and I could I suppose have just said look, this is absolutely disgusting, get off with you and reported it. Perhaps that would have been the best way to have gone forward.”

Mr Parkinson told the hearing he started joining in with the “very unpleasant stuff ”.

Mr Parkinson has accepted that he took part in an inappropriate online conversation between May 25 and 30 2016, where he made references to having sex with a 14-year-old girl and committing bestiality with a dog,

He denies an allegation that he turned up at the Travelodge in Falkirk on May 31 2016 with the intention of engaging in sexual activity with an under-age girl.

The hearing continues.