Teacher struck off for groping two children

A FORMER teacher at Charedi schools in Salford has been banned from the profession after the Teaching Regulation Agency found him guilty of serious sexual misconduct with two children.

A disciplinary panel said that Yankel Shepherd had touched, kissed and engaged in sexual activity with a child at a Jewish community centre during the 1980s. It was also alleged that he also kissed and hugged another boy while working at a teacher at one of the schools where he worked.

Mr Shepherd, who did not attend the hearing, has denied the allegations.

In its published decision, the panel found him responsible “for the most serious degree of sexual misconduct, having abused his position as a teacher to exploit Pupil X, a pupil he knew to be vulnerable, and having engaged in sexual acts with Child A when he was a child”.

In his evidence, Child A, who is now an adult, described meeting Mr Shepherd, who was helping to run activities for youth at a Jewish community centre, on Sunday afternoons over a period of 12 to 18 months from the age of 12.

He recalled sitting on Mr Shepherd’s lap and being touched on his thighs and groin. Within a few months, Mr Shepherd had begun unzipping him and fondling his genitals. Mr Shepherd would regularly lie on top of him and masturbate.

After a while, Child A began to have some inkling that something was wrong and stopped going to the community centre. But he continued to see Mr Shepherd in shul who, he said, took him upstairs alone to the ladies’ gallery and unzipped his trousers.

In 2012, Mr Shepherd, who was working at the Talmud Torah Chinuch N’Orim school in Salford, was arrested after Child A made allegations to the police but the probe ended in 2013 when the child decided not to give evidence against him.

The panel reported that a police statement given by a social worker who had visited Mr Shepherd in 2012 said that he had “admitted that there had been some incidents with a boy when he lived in London. He said he deeply regrets it and he is remorseful. He said he was young and confused”.

Mr Shepherd left the school in 2013 and that year joined another, Talmud Torah Yetev Lev, in Salford. From 2014 to 2018 he was also a learning assistant and helped with special needs at the Oholei Yosef Yitzchok Lubavitch School in Salford.

In October 2018, he was suspended from Yetev Lev after allegations that he had behaved inappropriately towards Pupil X while at Oholei Yosef Yitzchok, and subsequently resigned. In 2019, the CPS decided not to prosecute him.

Responsible for most serious degree of sexual misconduct