Teacher guilty of professional misconduct over inappropriate texts to second year students

A post-primary teacher has been found guilty of three counts of professional misconduct for sending a large number of inappropriate messages, some with sexualised content, to three male students who were on a GAA team he coached in their school.

A fitness-to-teach inquiry held by the Teaching Council also concluded that the teacher had contravened the Code of Professional Conduct for Teachers over his online contact over several months with the boys who were second year students aged 14-15 years.

The teacher was accused of communicating with the three students via messages on Microsoft Teams which were inappropriate in terms of their content, frequency and timing.

The messages, which were often sent early in the morning or late at night, occurred between September 2022 and May 2023 while the teacher was providing maternity leave cover at a large secondary school.

The teacher and the school cannot be identified as a result of a direction by the chairperson of the inquiry, Noel Cronin.

The teacher, who was aged 24 at the time, admitted to the inquiry that he had been “very naïve and immature” in sending messages to the three students.

He claimed he had slipped into thinking like a teenager after becoming friendly with them but stressed that he was “not soliciting anything or grooming anyone”.

He stressed:

This is not some sort of case where something was caught before it happened.

The teacher said he was ashamed of the messages and now “struggled to even hear one line of them being read out”. However, he added: “The vast majority of this stuff came from a place of care.”

The teacher acknowledged that the messages were a poor reflection of his judgement but insisted they did not represent anything “more sinister”.

Messages

While the messages initially were mostly about Gaelic football, it was claimed their content appeared to change towards the end of the academic year and contained more innuendo and sexual references.

Derogatory comments were also made by the teacher about other students in the school and players on other GAA teams and their clubs, while some other messages were deleted.

The inquiry heard that the teacher texted one student: “I thought you were 100 percent gay” and described him as a “golden boy” and “such a bender”. He also made a reference to seeing the same student holding hands with another boy in their town.

In relation to another student who had suffered a broken arm, the teacher asked him if he had got “good at it with your other hand” which was regarded as a reference to masturbation.

On another occasion, he texted the boy: “Are you sexy?” He claimed a third student looked “homosexual” in a photo of the boy going for a high ball during a game.

'Over the top'

In reply to questions from his solicitor, Eoin McGlinchey, the teacher accepted there was absolutely no justification for any sexual references.

The teacher, who was also involved in coaching GAA teams at county level, claimed he was genuinely fond of the students and cared about them “a bit too much”. “I was over the top in expressing that. Reading that now it is as clear as day,” he added.

The teacher said he had found the last few months in the job difficult as he was “emotionally involved” with the team he was coaching and knew he would be leaving the school.

The teacher became tearful as he outlined how he knew there would be repercussions for his actions but expressed hope that he would have a chance to return to teaching. He also claimed there was “a huge void” in his life after he had stepped down from coaching Gaelic football on advice from Tusla.

School action

Counsel for the Teaching Council, Eoghan O’Sullivan BL, said the inquiry arose after the regulatory body had been contacted by one of the boys’ mothers who discovered the messages on her laptop after it had been used by her son.

The inquiry heard the woman raised her concerns with the school’s principal who decided that while the messages were inappropriate, they did not raise any child protection issues.

Mr O’Sullivan said they were dealt with “at a local level” including having the teacher’s access to the school’s Microsoft Teams platform blocked. However, he said the principal became more alarmed about some of the messages following a further review of their content in May 2023.

The inquiry heard the teacher was subsequently placed on “gardening leave” and had not returned to the school after the principal had contacted Tusla again.

Although no formal complaint was made about the teacher, Mr O’Sullivan said the Teaching Council’s executive committee had decided to refer the case for further examination which had resulted in the current inquiry.

'Utterly inappropriate'

He said the content of the messages, which ran to over 700 pages of documents, was “utterly inappropriate”, despite the teacher’s claim that they represented jokes of a crude and sexual nature that were common in “locker rooms”.

Mr O’Sullivan said the refusal of one of the boys to tell his mother about the content of texts between himself and the teacher that he had deleted had caused her “a lot of distress”.

The inquiry heard that the Teaching Council had applied for an interim suspension order on the teacher but it did not proceed following undertakings given by the teacher to the High Court.

The Association of Secondary Teachers’ Union of Ireland had claimed the Teaching Council’s application was being made on the basis of a “subjective interpretation” of online messages relating to GAA training and matches.

The inquiry heard the teacher had subsequently attended counselling to address anxiety he had suffered from his teenage years when he was overweight and had few friends.

In a closing submission, Mr O’Sullivan said the teacher’s conduct at its most benign level represented “an adult behaving like a teenager”. However, Mr O’Sullivan said it was concerning that some messages very clearly contained sexual undertones and patent references to adult themes, while other texts had been deleted.

'No ulterior motive'

In reply, Mr McGlinchey said it was important to remember that the vast majority of messages related to Gaelic football from somebody who was obsessed with the sport.

The solicitor said there was no evidence to suggest that the teacher had any ulterior motive in sending the texts to the three students and he had done nothing more than commit inadvertent breaches of the code of conduct.

Announcing the panel’s findings, Mr Cronin said a future hearing would be arranged to determine what sanction should be imposed on the teacher.

- If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this article, please click here for a list of support services.

Click here to read article