Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

The Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil will have the fi­nal say in an ap­peal over the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s re­fusal to re­veal the iden­ti­ty of the per­son who ac­cused a sec­ondary school teacher of sex­u­al mis­con­duct in­volv­ing a Form Two stu­dent.

On Mon­day, the Court of Ap­peal grant­ed con­di­tion­al leave for the tech­ni­cal-vo­ca­tion­al teacher to pur­sue a fi­nal ap­peal be­fore the coun­try’s high­est ap­pel­late court. His iden­ti­ty has been with­held be­cause of the na­ture of the un­proven al­le­ga­tions against him.

The teacher’s lawyers, Navin­dra Ram­nanan and Ricky Pan­do­hee, con­tend that a High Court judge and a pan­el of the Court of Ap­peal were wrong to re­ject his chal­lenge to the min­istry’s po­si­tion.

What­ev­er the out­come, the ap­peal will set an im­por­tant le­gal prece­dent that could af­fect how fu­ture dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ceed­ings against pub­lic of­fi­cers are han­dled.

The teacher was ac­cused of im­moral, ob­scene or dis­or­der­ly con­duct in of­fice fol­low­ing an al­leged in­ci­dent in­volv­ing a teenage girl dur­ing the school’s lun­cheon pe­ri­od in June 2022.

He was ac­cused of tak­ing the teenag­er in­to a small room and ques­tion­ing her about her home life. He al­leged­ly asked whether she had ever had sex­u­al re­la­tions with an old­er man and whether he could be her first, be­fore touch­ing her in­ap­pro­pri­ate­ly.

The stu­dent trans­ferred to an­oth­er sec­ondary school af­ter the in­ci­dent, and the teacher was sus­pend­ed pend­ing the out­come of the dis­ci­pli­nary process.

In Jan­u­ary 2023, the teacher made a re­quest un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) for the name of the per­son who re­port­ed him and a copy of that per­son’s re­port. He al­so sought in­for­ma­tion about the steps the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion had tak­en to in­ves­ti­gate the re­port.

The min­istry de­nied his re­quest, say­ing dis­clo­sure could prej­u­dice the on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion and dis­cour­age whis­tle-blow­ers from pro­vid­ing in­for­ma­tion to the min­istry in con­fi­dence in the fu­ture.

The teacher’s lawyers filed a law­suit, ar­gu­ing that al­though they had been told the al­leged vic­tim’s iden­ti­ty, they still need­ed to know who made the re­port to de­fend against the al­le­ga­tions.

The dis­ci­pli­nary process was stayed while this case and an­oth­er case con­cern­ing the dis­clo­sure of oth­er re­ports re­lat­ed to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­main pend­ing.

The law­suit was dis­missed by High Court judge West­min James, prompt­ing the ap­peal.

In his judg­ment, Jus­tice Ricky Rahim found that his col­league’s han­dling of the case, in­clud­ing his re­view of the pub­lic-in­ter­est bal­anc­ing ex­er­cise con­duct­ed by the min­istry, could not be fault­ed.

Jus­tice Rahim said the judge had right­ly giv­en weight to pro­tect­ing the iden­ti­ty of a con­fi­den­tial in­for­mant.

“He went on to con­sid­er that if there is no con­fi­dence by in­for­mants that they will be af­ford­ed pro­tec­tion there would be in­jus­tice to them and the chil­dren who are un­able to speak for them­selves,” Jus­tice Rahim said.

Jus­tice Rahim ruled that the teacher had been giv­en suf­fi­cient par­tic­u­lars to de­fend him­self against the al­le­ga­tions.

“This court ob­serves that in a re­al sense, the per­son mak­ing the al­le­ga­tion is the child. The Ap­pel­lant was in­formed sub­se­quent­ly as to the name of the child and the cir­cum­stances which des­ig­nat­ed the oc­ca­sions such as the time, place and na­ture of the al­le­ga­tion,” he said.

The teacher was al­so or­dered to pay $61,425 in le­gal costs for pur­su­ing the case.

Jus­tice Char­maine Pem­ber­ton al­so wrote a judg­ment agree­ing with Jus­tice Rahim. She went fur­ther, crit­i­cis­ing the de­ci­sion to pur­sue the case and sub­se­quent ap­peal.

“It ap­pears as if the FOIA process was used to de­lay the dis­ci­pli­nary process which, so far, has not been demon­strat­ed to be taint­ed in any way, form or fash­ion,” Jus­tice Pem­ber­ton said.

“The court ought not al­low its process­es to be used in this man­ner,” she added.