Assault Charge Against Teacher Dismissed

Press, Volume C, Issue 29691, 8 December 1961, Page 24

Assault Charge Against Teacher Dismissed

A 12-year-old schoolboy alleged in the Magistrate’s Court yesterday that his English teacher strapped him across the face, elbow, and head because he had a “bit of a smile on his face” while reading in class. Finding that inconsistencies in the evidence of the boy and two other children raised a doubt, Mr E. S. J. Crutchtey, SM, acquitted a 33-yeer-old woman teacher on a charge of assault on October 3. She pleaded not guiMy. Mr B. McClelland's application for suppression of name—“'particularly in view of the school's good name” — was granted. The boy said he was asked to read aloud in class. While doing this he had a bit of a smile on his face. “She walked up to the desk with the strap doubled. She hit me across the lips and nose,” he said. The teacher then told him to keep reading, the boy said. ' “But I could not because my lip was numb.” He said that the teacher then struck him on the elbow and head. "Teacher Apologised” The boy said he cried. The teacher helped him with his reading, and later apologised for hitting him on the lip. To Mr McClelland, the boy said he was not sure whether he had been naughty that day He could not remember failing to answer when has name was called. He denied scribbling on a piece ot paper while reading. Told that the accused would say she meant to strike the desk and he swung rbund, the boy replied: “I don’t think that's true.” He said he “ducked back” when the strap came down. The boy said be did not like the teacher. He said he previously accused her of stabbing him on the knee With a pen. “That’s true,” he said.

A doctor said the boy's upper lip was swollen to twice its thickness. There was a red weal on both sides of his mouth and on his nose, and under the top lip there was a red mark where a blood vessel had ruptured. There was also an inkstain under the skin on the boy's left knee where he claimed he was stabbed, the witness said. Mother’s Evidence The boy's mother said she “got a dreadful shock" when he came home crying. "His lip was practically straight out from his nose," she said. “He was holding his head in his hands and complaining of a headache.” A 12-year-old boy said he thought the teacher tried to hit the complainant on the hand, but the strap struck his face when he ducked. Constable D. P. Highatead said the teacher told him she intended to strike the desk. The strap might have bounced back and hit the boy. “She empbattcaily denied hitting him on the elbow or on the top of the head.” be said. The fact that the teacher carried the strap doubled was inconsistent with intent to hit the boy, said the Magistrate. He said the prosecution had not established an intentional assault.