Teacher investigated for sex with student

A Stuff #metooNZ investigation can reveal a top teacher resigned abruptly from an Auckland girls' school after being accused of inappropriate sexual conduct with a student. Alison Mau reports.

The long-standing head of music at top Auckland girls’ school Epsom Girls’ Grammar resigned suddenly in late 2020 amid a school-led investigation into an inappropriate relationship with a student, a Sunday Star-Times investigation has found.

Peter Thomas, 51, now faces a Teaching Council investigation prompted by EGGS management, which in turn was contacted by police last year.

The student, now 19, told the Sunday Star-Times the behaviour began with ‘‘hugs’’ from Thomas when she was suffering anxiety as a 16-year-old, year 12 student. By the following year, Thomas was kissing and sexually touching her at school, and on one occasion had sex with her while she was working for him at a government-funded Saturday morning music school, she claims.

The student says the sexual behaviour often made her feel ‘‘gross’’, but she had become dependent on Thomas and thought she was in love with him.

The Star-Times has agreed not to name her. Messages between the two show the relationship continued after the student left school and in March 2020, Thomas rented a motel room in Parnell, supplied the then-17-year-old with alcohol and had sex with her.

Auckland City district police confirmed they received a complaint of a sexual allegation from a 17-year-old female in 2020, but could not proceed to prosecution as she was over 16 and had consented.

‘‘Allegations involved an employee of a secondary school. The allegation was taken seriously and investigated but did not satisfy the requirements under the Solicitor-General Prosecution Guidelines. No charges were laid,’’ a police spokesperson said.

The Teaching Council told the Star-Times ‘‘voluntary agreement not to teach’’ could be sought if the council had ‘‘immediate concerns about the safety of children and young people’’, and confirmed it had sought this agreement from Thomas.

But Thomas continued to run a governmentfunded out-of-hours music (OOHMA) teaching programme at Remuera Intermediate School.

The classes, funded by the Ministry of Education, host dozens of primary and intermediate-aged children for small-group teaching on Saturday mornings.

Remuera Intermediate principal Kyle Brewerton said he did not know about Thomas’s exit from EGGS until contacted by the Star-Times for comment, and has contacted the Ministry of Education.

‘‘The safety and wellbeing of children is of the utmost importance, so in their best interest and that of their families and wha¯ nau we asked this person to not return on site while we looked into the situation,’’ Brewerton told the Star-Times.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Education confirmed it had been alerted.

‘‘We understand that the person held an administrative role in [the] OOHMA programme. They are not a teacher and have never been involved in tutoring students. The school have advised us that to date, no concerns have been raised with them about this person by either children attending or their families.’’

Brewerton has since shut down the school’s outof-hours music programme, after finding no police checks had been carried out on its tutoring staff.

‘‘We take this issue extremely seriously and

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