Teacher cleared of assaulting boy

Margaret Sesay: "Nightmare over"

A teacher has been cleared by a jury of assaulting a pupil during a violent classroom confrontation.

Margaret Sesay, who had denied punching, kicking and scratching the 13-year-old, said she had been the real victim.

I have been doing this job since 1983 but this has just taken my confidence away

Margaret Sesay

The supply teacher burst into tears at Southwark Crown Court in London as she heard the verdicts.

One of her supporters, a former British ambassador to Belize, said the case "exemplifies the problems teachers have to cope with day in and day out".

The jury unanimously acquitted her of assault occasioning actual bodily harm last July, and of an alternative lesser charge of common assault.

'Dizzy and bleeding'

Her alleged victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told the four-day trial that she had pushed him out of a classroom in his East London school at the start of a lesson after he had tried to let in an excluded pupil.

He claimed the teacher then went for him, grabbing him round the neck, pushing him against a wall, kicking him and punching him in the face, leaving him dizzy and bleeding from a long scratch on his neck.

But Mrs Sesay, of Hampstead, north west London, said she had ushered him out of the classroom with her hand, only to be met with "a torrent of foul language" as he turned round and slapped her.

She denied having lost her temper and told the jury the schoolboy "had always been a disruptive pupil" in a "very difficult class".

'Complaint culture'

It had been a longstanding problem and she had written a number of letters to her head of department asking for alternative teaching arrangements to be made for such children.

It was outrageous she was ever brought to court in the first place

Union leader Nigel de Gruchy

After the verdicts were announced, Mrs Sesay, who came to London in 1989 as the wife of Sierra Leone's ambassador, said she would need "a long think" before deciding whether or not to return to teaching.

"I have been doing this job since 1983 but this has just taken my confidence away. For all the good that I have done, this is what I get," she said.

David Mackilligin, former British ambassador to Belize and one-time governor of the Virgin Islands, said: "This is a case which deserves national publicity because it exemplifies the problems teachers have to cope with day in and day out, especially in under-privileged schools.

"Margaret was making a real difference in a school with very disruptive pupils."

He said there was a "complaint culture in this country" with parents rushing off to the police whenever a problem arose.

Widespread problem

Mrs Sesay was helped in her case by the NASUWT teachers' union.

Its general secretary, Nigel de Gruchy, said afterwards: "This is child protection gone berserk.

"I am relieved and delighted she has been acquitted but it was outrageous she was ever brought to court in the first place.

"If a child accuses a teacher of anything then the teacher is assumed to be guilty these days.

"The government has got to get hold of those interpreting the Children Act - the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and the rest - and restore sanity and common sense to a situation which is escalating rapidly out of control."

Alternative centres

The Conservatives' education spokeswoman, Theresa May, said: "This case illustrates the problems that teachers face from disruptive pupils.

"The best way to deal with these problems is to give heads the power to remove disruptive children from the classroom."

Earlier this week the party leader, William Hague, said a future Conservative government would set up special centres where disruptive pupils could be educated out of mainstream schools.

The government said such centres existed already, and that there was no question that head teachers had the power to expel violent pupils.

But heads complained at a union conference last week that schools were being forced by local education authority appeal panels to take back violent pupils they had expelled, to meet government targets on reducing exclusions.

The Education Secretary, David Blunkett, told them he would consider changing the regulations to make it clear that this was not appropriate.