Boy’s claims disgusting, says teacher
THE teacher accused of sexually abusing a schoolboy has emotionally told a court his allegations are ‘‘disturbing’’ and ‘‘disgusting’’.
She strongly denied sleeping with the boy, getting pregnant to him or having an abortion, kissing him, texting him or falling in love with him, all of which he had earlier related in the High Court at Wellington.
‘‘It’s disturbing. It wasn’t me,’’ she told the court yesterday afternoon. ‘‘I would never do that to a child, never, and I would be very, very hurt if my son was the one going through this,’’ she said, as she struggled to control her emotions. She said her own son was 6.
She also agreed it would be illegal to have sex with a child aged 12. ‘‘I would say no child at that age would be consenting.’’
The teacher, who has name suppression, faces 15 sex-abuse charges, which span more than three years from 2011, when the boy was 10 years old.
Since the trial started on Monday, the court has heard allegations that she and the boy had sex once when he was 12, performed other sex acts, kissed and shared intimate photos and text messages.
She had ‘‘no idea’’ why the boy had made such claims about her, calling him cunning and manipulative.
‘‘I, as a mother, have been accused of doing something like this. That is why I’m upset.’’
She tried not to listen to his evidence ‘‘because I was disgusted’’.
‘‘I haven’t been pregnant since my son . . . I didn’t send him any photos. I didn’t ask him to send me photos.’’
She confirmed a photo another schoolboy had on his cellphone was of her and had been taken by her former partner. That boy had earlier told the court he asked the teacher to text some photos to him, which he said she did. Five intimate photos of her were shown to the jury.
She said one of her cellphones was stolen permanently in 2014, but she also had several other phones stolen temporarily and returned.
When the sex-abuse allegations were made in August 2014, she said she was stood down by her school, but remained employed by it.
Earlier yesterday, one of her colleagues told the court she alerted police after discovering the relationship between the woman and the boy.
She contacted police in the middle of last year after discovering texts between them on his cellphone. By then, he had admitted spending a night with her, the colleague said.
She told how she developed concerns about the relationship after noticing the pair were spending ‘‘a lot of time together’’, although not on their own.
‘‘It seemed that he was getting special treatment,’’ she said.
That became more noticeable after Waitangi Day last year.
However, the accused teacher told the court that was incorrect.
On Tuesday, the boy, who is now 14, told the jury they had sex in a Paraparaumu hotel the day before Waitangi Day last year. At the time, he was 12.
The boy’s mother phoned the accused teacher’s colleague on Waitangi Day, saying her son failed to come home the night before, and questioned whether he had stayed over with his sports team. The colleague told her there was no sleepover.
Weeks later, she checked again with the boy’s mother about where he had stayed, and was told he had stayed at his friend’s place.
The colleague tracked down the boy’s friend and found out that he had not stayed with him, so later questioned the boy.
He admitted spending the night in a motel with the teacher.
The colleague told the jury she ‘‘growled at him’’, but was unable to explain why she took no action.
Some weeks later, she asked to check the boy’s cellphone because she was suspicious he was texting the teacher, and discovered two texts from her asking how his family was coping after a bereavement.
Eventually, she said, she confiscated the phone and took it to police.
Detective Nicholas Brown, of Porirua, told the court he received a complaint from the teacher’s colleague on August 2, 2014, which had prompted the investigation.