This is unbelievable:

But the board’s investigation of the allegations found no evidence the teacher’s actions outside school affected his ability to teach.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/4739970a11.html

Spurned dad on assault charges

By LEIGH Van Der STOEP – Sunday Star Times | Sunday, 26 October 2008

A father has been charged with assaulting one of his son’s primary school teachers after the teacher had an affair with his wife.

He says the Auckland school failed to act after the affair, which started when the pupil’s mother began work there as a teacher aide.

He has been battling for almost two years to keep the teacher away from his eight-year-old son, but the school allowed the teacher to take some of the boy’s lessons.

Police say the woman’s 42-year-old husband went to the school earlier this year to retrieve his son’s file, but ran into the teacher. He allegedly patted the teacher’s back “forcefully”, causing him to spill his coffee.

“I put my hand on his shoulder and said, ‘Congratulations, you’ve won mate’. I was very sarcastic and patronising,” says the man, who the Sunday Star-Times has chosen not to name to protect the identity of his children.

Despite the minor nature of the allegations and that the man has no previous convictions, he was arrested at work two weeks later and kept in police cells for hours, before being charged with common assault.

The man says his son and two daughters knew the teacher was “partly” responsible for the break-up of their parents and he wanted to protect them from the stress of being in contact with him.

The teacher began the affair with the man’s wife in 2005.

When the man discovered the relationship in 2006 he complained to the principal, who told him there had been other similar allegations against the teacher, the man says.

The principal assured the man he would investigate and the teacher would be kept away from his two children at the school.

“It worked well and he left at the end of the year.

“Then we started getting newsletters last year at the end of third term saying, `We’re encouraging [the teacher] to come back… Why would they encourage someone like that to come back?”

Allegations had since emerged of the teacher asking the man’s wife and another woman for a threesome, drinking at the school’s pool after hours, and being drunk and abusive at the local bar.

“The disturbing thing was [the principal’s] attitude that ‘boys will be boys’, that there was this social scene with teachers. I’m not a teacher and I don’t behave like that.”

When the teacher returned to the school at the start of this year the man complained again to the principal and board of trustees, asking that the teacher be kept away from his son.

The school’s response was that the teacher took only occasional maths, drama and remedial reading lessons.

The boy could read “quietly” in the library during these lessons and did not have to have any contact with the teacher, the school told the father.

Meanwhile, the father had given the teacher a “verbal dressing down” on school grounds, warning him not to come near his family.

“It was strong, it was in his face but I didn’t swear or anything.”

This confrontation prompted the school to warn the man he would be issued with a trespass notice. That was put into force following the alleged assault in the staffroom.

The chairman of the school’s board of trustees said it was a “tricky situation” because it involved high emotion and personal relationships.

But the board’s investigation of the allegations found no evidence the teacher’s actions outside school affected his ability to teach.

The school had dealt with the matter appropriately, but he could not comment on actions taken by the previous board which first investigated, he said. “We took swift action when it needed to be taken…”

The father plans to complain to the Teacher’s Council. The teacher has since left the school.