Failures in teacher investigation
The police investigation into a teacher’s relationship with a teen who later took her own life was flawed and deficient, the Independent Police Conduct Authority has ruled.
Gisborne teacher Samuel Nicholas Back’s relationship with his 13-year-old student sparked CYF and police inquiries after a nurse walked in on him holding the girl’s hand and ‘‘cuddling’’ her on a hospital bed.
The girl, Reiha McLelland, died by suicide in August 2014, two months after police concluded there was insufficient evidence of criminal offending.
Back, who was 41 in 2014, was struck off and censured for having an inappropriate relationship with McLelland.
Their relationship became more intense after McLelland left Gisborne Intermediate School – where Back had been her teacher – for boarding school in 2014.
In late March 2014, she was admitted to Gisborne Hospital – while there, Back visited her and the pair were spotted by a nurse on her bed holding hands.
By April 2014, the Gisborne police child protection team (CPT) began investigating.
In April 2017, after attending both the Teachers Council Disciplinary Tribunal hearing and a coroner’s inquest, her parents Hinemoa and Bruce McLelland complained to the authority, raising a number of concerns.
In a decision released yesterday, the authority found the CPT investigating officer did not adequately assess the evidence and that the investigating officer’s supervisor – former Detective Sergeant Theo Ackroyd – had a clear conflict of interest as he was chair of the Gisborne Intermediate School board of trustees during the investigation. This was not properly managed and, consequently, the investigation was not adequately supervised.
It also found the investigation plan was inadequate and not all appropriate inquiries were conducted, that information from the interviews of McLelland and Back was not recorded appropriately, and Back’s interview was not conducted properly.
It agreed that, notwithstanding the inadequacy of the police assessment, there was insufficient evidence available to police to charge Back with a criminal offence.