‘Tough love thing’
Children on a school camp, aged 11 and 12, were forced by a teacher to strip to their underwear and stand with their noses against a tree. They were also driven crying to an unknown place in the night, left alone to walk back and were lost for hours until after midnight.
Ngamihi Moses, then a teacher at Whakatāne Intermediate School, was charged with serious misconduct in a New Zealand Teachers’ Council Disciplinary tribunal in November 2021 for her role.
Moses, a teacher of 20 years’ was allowed to keep her job and retained the principal’s support, despite the tribunal finding ‘‘young students were placed at risk and later humiliated’’ in what they described as ‘‘a gross abuse of power’’ that had potential to cause them psychological harm.’’
The incidents took place in November 2019 when two classes from Whakatā ne Intermediate School attended a school camp at Tokikapu Marae in the Waitomo area.
On the last night of camp, when six year 8 students, ‘‘misbehaved’’ they were told to pack and get in the school van. One started to cry. Rose Kara, a senior teacher and the camp leader, told parent helpers that Moses was going to do a ‘‘tough love thing’’ with the students.
Moses drove them to an unfamiliar location in Ō torohanga, with the idea of giving them a ‘‘fright’’.
Moses dropped them at a bus stop and told them to walk back to Whakatā ne – two and a half hours drive away – or walk 10km back to camp. She drove off.
The children, unfamiliar with the area, split into two groups with three walking back to the camp and three heading to Whakatā ne.
Twenty minutes later, Moses caught up with the three students walking back to camp. She asked where the others were and was told that they had gone towards Whakatāne. She then drove off to try and find the other three. When she couldn’t she drove back, collected the other three students and searched again unsuccessfully before calling the police.
The three missing students were not located until after midnight, when a parent helper found them and took them to Moses. While she was talking to police, the three children had to stand with their noses to a shop window.
Moses then drove all six children back to camp. The three children who had tried to walk back were allowed to go to sleep. Moses ordered the other three to take off their pants and strip down to their underwear and put their noses against a tree until they apologised.
When two showed ‘‘sufficient remorse’’ for Moses’, they were allowed to return to bed.
The third student was made to stand for another 20 minutes.
The next morning Moses took these three children home, advised their families and apologised. The school decided Moses should write a formal apology to each whā nau and receive a warning. The principal informed the Teachers’ Council.
In her initial written statement to the Teachers’ Council complaints investigator, Moses said she had been asked by her ‘‘education leader to take the students up to a dangerous location and make them walk home in the dark’’.
She stated she was working under immense stress, late at night with insufficient support, and did not have the skills to deal with it.
At a meeting with the
It was ‘‘an invasion of the students’ privacy with potential to cause them psychological harm.’’ Disciplinary Tribunal
Complaints Assessment Committee Moses said she had been annoyed with the students’ attitudes and believed that if nothing happened they would laugh and boast about it.
She accepted that she should not have asked them to strip and had met with the various whā nau members and apologised. The matter was then referred to the Teachers’ Council Disciplinary Tribunal.
The tribunal ruled it was ‘‘serious misconduct’’, that it had been dangerous to leave ‘‘young and vulnerable’’ children alone at night and requiring them to undress and stand in their underwear ‘‘was humiliating and a gross abuse of power’’ and ‘‘an invasion of the students’ privacy with potential to cause them psychological harm’’.
The names of the children were suppressed. Whakatāne Intermediate School sought suppression of the school name and Moses’ name.
The tribunal did not agree, saying that it ‘‘would be improper for members of the public to be denied access to this information when placing their children into the care of others’’.
The penalties imposed were that Moses had to notify any current or prospective teaching employer for a period of two years. Whakatā ne Intermediate and its board investigated after “concerns were raised” , principal Mike Webster and board chairperson Alan Basire said in a statement to
Moses declined to comment to She is now working at Tarawera High School, according to the school’s website.