Poor William Gibson
You know, the teacher who has been removed from a school following the revelation of his past misdemeanours.
His form consists of one offence of indecent assault from 1980, and a couple of other deception offences (fraud, forgery and theft) from 2000. He only served a custodial sentence for the deception offences. Financial adviser and fraud; teacher and indecent assault. Positions of trust being abused habitually, anyone? And before you sue me, I don't know anything about the offences beyond the information available from the grauniad, the Channel 4 news website, and the interview with him that I heard on Radio 4's Today programme. The reason I'm writing this is because the interview was so interesting.
In fact, small aside -I understand you can download the interview in MP3 format; listen to it on real player; or - get this - get it in podcast! How cool! If you go to the BBC Today programme website you'll find all the details about the Today programme and the link to the podcast free trial. As the free trial is, oddly enough a trial, please go and try it out because I hope they keep it. I will of course be signing up this evening.
Now the reason for going into so much detail about where you can listen to this is because I'm interested to find out if anyone else thinks he completely failed to understand what he was doing. I'll be editing this once I've re-listened to the interview of course, but until then this'll have to do (not that it matters, I think I'm the only one who reads this).
Facts (as I remember them):
In 1980 he had a relationship with a female pupil aged 15. He's 59 now so would have been about 33 or 34 in 1980. They didn't have sex until she was 16. When the relationship started he was going through a divorce. The relationship lasted a good long while and I think (but can't remember where I heard this from) that they ended up getting married.
His comments in the interview:
When asked if he had a relationship with a 15 year old he said, yes but she was very mature, and went on to explain she was confident, eloquent etc. Fine, so she was clever. Plenty of clever people are not actually "mature". It would have been better if he'd said "yes but she was only a day away from 16". Seeing as the law focuses on physical age rather than mental age it would have been a better idea for him to have pointed out the proximity to the threshold.
When asked if he thought he'd done anything wrong he said that everything had been done with her consent. This really blew me away. Later he admitted he had known it was illegal to have sex with anyone under 16 but not that it was illegal (indecent assault, actually) to touch anyone under 16. Two points here:-
He's a bloody teacher. Did no-one stand up in front of all those students and explain "how to stay out of jail"? I know about these things because I learnt it at law school. I would have thought that teachers should be told in their training what they can and can't do. Then we won't end up with anyone saying "no-one told me".
He thinks that because a child consents it's OK? Why does he think all those female teachers loose their jobs after consensual repationships with students (will put some links when I get home - don't feel like internet trawling for this at work)? Apart from the earlier point about anyone under the age of 16 being unable to consent, that is. The teacher is in a position of trust. The parents think the child will be safe at school - teachers are supposed to keep their eyes on kids and stop other kids preying on them, so you assume the teacher has some sort of protector role, not a predatory one.
To summarise - this girl consented doesn't mean didly-squat. She was too young. Fair enough, he didn't know but God knows why he didn't. He abused a position of trust with the parents and with the child. She was fairly mature he says. She might have realised it was wrong but felt the pressure to respond - and did. Job done - child groomed.
Pah. Poor chap. On the evidence available to me it seems a really sorry tale of inadequate understanding of the law and a failure to grasp the point of the laws.
Not something to be compared to a nasty piece of work who was also dismissed this week for downloading child porn. However I suspect that when I hear about the facts behind that it's going to sound grey rather than blackblackblack too. Poor Ruth Kelly. And admiration for trawling through the records. Hope she's not up too late this evening.
His form consists of one offence of indecent assault from 1980, and a couple of other deception offences (fraud, forgery and theft) from 2000. He only served a custodial sentence for the deception offences. Financial adviser and fraud; teacher and indecent assault. Positions of trust being abused habitually, anyone? And before you sue me, I don't know anything about the offences beyond the information available from the grauniad, the Channel 4 news website, and the interview with him that I heard on Radio 4's Today programme. The reason I'm writing this is because the interview was so interesting.
In fact, small aside -I understand you can download the interview in MP3 format; listen to it on real player; or - get this - get it in podcast! How cool! If you go to the BBC Today programme website you'll find all the details about the Today programme and the link to the podcast free trial. As the free trial is, oddly enough a trial, please go and try it out because I hope they keep it. I will of course be signing up this evening.
Now the reason for going into so much detail about where you can listen to this is because I'm interested to find out if anyone else thinks he completely failed to understand what he was doing. I'll be editing this once I've re-listened to the interview of course, but until then this'll have to do (not that it matters, I think I'm the only one who reads this).
Facts (as I remember them):
In 1980 he had a relationship with a female pupil aged 15. He's 59 now so would have been about 33 or 34 in 1980. They didn't have sex until she was 16. When the relationship started he was going through a divorce. The relationship lasted a good long while and I think (but can't remember where I heard this from) that they ended up getting married.
His comments in the interview:
When asked if he had a relationship with a 15 year old he said, yes but she was very mature, and went on to explain she was confident, eloquent etc. Fine, so she was clever. Plenty of clever people are not actually "mature". It would have been better if he'd said "yes but she was only a day away from 16". Seeing as the law focuses on physical age rather than mental age it would have been a better idea for him to have pointed out the proximity to the threshold.
When asked if he thought he'd done anything wrong he said that everything had been done with her consent. This really blew me away. Later he admitted he had known it was illegal to have sex with anyone under 16 but not that it was illegal (indecent assault, actually) to touch anyone under 16. Two points here:-
He's a bloody teacher. Did no-one stand up in front of all those students and explain "how to stay out of jail"? I know about these things because I learnt it at law school. I would have thought that teachers should be told in their training what they can and can't do. Then we won't end up with anyone saying "no-one told me".
He thinks that because a child consents it's OK? Why does he think all those female teachers loose their jobs after consensual repationships with students (will put some links when I get home - don't feel like internet trawling for this at work)? Apart from the earlier point about anyone under the age of 16 being unable to consent, that is. The teacher is in a position of trust. The parents think the child will be safe at school - teachers are supposed to keep their eyes on kids and stop other kids preying on them, so you assume the teacher has some sort of protector role, not a predatory one.
To summarise - this girl consented doesn't mean didly-squat. She was too young. Fair enough, he didn't know but God knows why he didn't. He abused a position of trust with the parents and with the child. She was fairly mature he says. She might have realised it was wrong but felt the pressure to respond - and did. Job done - child groomed.
Pah. Poor chap. On the evidence available to me it seems a really sorry tale of inadequate understanding of the law and a failure to grasp the point of the laws.
Not something to be compared to a nasty piece of work who was also dismissed this week for downloading child porn. However I suspect that when I hear about the facts behind that it's going to sound grey rather than blackblackblack too. Poor Ruth Kelly. And admiration for trawling through the records. Hope she's not up too late this evening.
posted by Chaya at 12:32 pm
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