An­na-Lisa Paul

A teacher at St Mary’s Col­lege, Port-of-Spain, has been asked to cease to re­port for du­ty af­ter an al­le­ga­tion of mis­con­duct was lev­elled against him by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.

The al­leged sex­u­al mis­con­duct was said to have oc­curred be­tween the teacher and a stu­dent back in March.

And even though sev­er­al in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions were re­port­ed­ly con­duct­ed by school of­fi­cials—Guardian un­der­stands the mat­ter was not brought to the at­ten­tion of the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (TSC) un­til mid-Au­gust.

This came days be­fore the new aca­d­e­m­ic term was set to be­gin on Sep­tem­ber 2.

Act­ing im­me­di­ate­ly on the in­for­ma­tion re­ceived, the TSC re­port­ed­ly in­struct­ed that a cease to re­port for du­ty let­ter be is­sued to the teacher.

Hav­ing been hand­ed the let­ter on Au­gust 30, provin­cial of­fi­cials yes­ter­day con­firmed the teacher had not been to the school since.

Of­fi­cials yes­ter­day con­firmed the mat­ter had al­so been re­port­ed to the Child Pro­tec­tion Unit of the Po­lice Ser­vice.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Fa­ther Gre­go­ry Au­gus­tine, Provin­cial, Holy Ghost Fa­thers—as­sured the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the school’s syl­labus was con­tin­u­ing as nor­mal.

In­di­cat­ing he was un­able to di­vulge much in­for­ma­tion due to con­fi­den­tial­i­ty reg­u­la­tions, Fr Au­gus­tine ad­mit­ted he was aware of the in­ci­dent.

He said, “I am telling you this has hap­pened, yes, but this is as far as we are able to say.”

The Holy Ghost Fa­thers has au­thor­i­ty for three schools, name­ly St Mary’s Col­lege; Fa­ti­ma Col­lege; and St An­tho­ny’s Col­lege.

Pressed to say more on the mat­ter, Fr Au­gus­tine said, “In is­sues like this, there are guide­lines that must be fol­lowed.”

“As a school, we are sub­ject to all those guide­lines in terms of in­ves­ti­ga­tion and go­ing through prop­er pro­ce­dures both in terms of pro­tect­ing the child and al­so to pro­tect the teacher in the sense that jus­tice must be done.”

Claim­ing that, “All of that was ad­hered to and fol­lowed,” Fr Au­gus­tine con­firmed the stu­dent con­tin­ued to at­tend class­es as he de­clared, “This is where we are now.”

Of­fi­cials close to the mat­ter con­firmed that at least two in­ves­ti­ga­tions had been con­duct­ed at the lev­el of the school au­thor­i­ties—with state­ments be­ing gath­ered from the stu­dent; the school’s coun­selor; and al­so the school’s prin­ci­pal Nigel Joseph.

Calls to Joseph’s cell­phone yes­ter­day went unan­swered.

Fr Au­gus­tine said in ad­di­tion to the in­ves­ti­ga­tions by the school, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion would al­so have con­duct­ed their own in­ves­ti­ga­tion be­fore sub­mit­ting cer­tain rec­om­men­da­tions to the TSC.

He ad­vised, “Peo­ple don’t play around with se­ri­ous mat­ters like this.”

Asked what kind of re­as­sur­ances he could of­fer par­ents of oth­er stu­dents at­tend­ing their schools, Fr Au­gus­tine said, “We are re­spon­si­ble. We have been in this busi­ness for years. In any or­gan­i­sa­tion, if some­thing comes to light, it has to be in­ves­ti­gat­ed prop­er­ly. You can’t act on a whim or hearsay. We are a re­spon­si­ble peo­ple, we know what our job is and there was no pussy­foot­ing around this.”

“This has come to light and we had to deal with this.”

Faced with the pos­si­bil­i­ty that there may be more in­ci­dents of a sim­i­lar na­ture that have not yet been re­port­ed and may soon sur­face, Fr Au­gus­tine re­it­er­at­ed, “If it be so, we will act as the in­for­ma­tion comes to us.”

Ef­forts to con­tact Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia for a com­ment proved fu­tile.

Oth­er of­fi­cials lament­ed that it was a hor­ri­ble sit­u­a­tion and one which had left them won­der­ing “If there were any sur­vivors among the boys.”