Wednesday 28 January 2015

A Safeguarding Issue To Consider

Safeguarding related work features in our profile and does not feature regularly in our blogs. However we feel it essential that we look at the issues surrounding a Deputy Head Teacher who was convicted of having sex with a 16 year old pupil.
This has been prepared by one of our team whose background incorporates a law degree and several related professional dimensions to his work.




Last week we happened across two news articles talking about the trial of Stuart Kerner. Kerner is a deputy head teacher who was convicted of having sex with a child, a girl of 16 years old. From the words used in the court, it is strongly suggested that the girl made advances towards him, and that he gave in to temptation.[1] He was given a non-custodial sentence for two counts of sexual activity with a child by a person in a position of trust.

The question we ask here is, given the clear breach of the law and the gravity of the situation, how was this allowed to happen? We will examine the following areas:
  • The law that governs this type of offence
  • The safeguarding ramifications
  • The prominent culture on blaming the victim
  • The reduction of the perpetrator’s responsibility.

The Law

The law that governs this particular offence is the Sexual Offences (Amendment) act 2000.[2] Section 3(1): “… it shall be an offence for a person aged 18 or over—

(a)to have sexual intercourse (whether vaginal or anal) with a person under that age; or

(b)to engage in any other sexual activity with or directed towards such a person,

if (in either case) he is in a position of trust in relation to that person.”

The sentence for committing this offence – and the punishment we therefore might reasonably expect Kerner to have received – is in Section 3(4): “A person guilty of an offence under this section shall be liable—

(a)on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months, or to a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum, or to both;

(b)on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years, or to a fine, or to both.

Given that Kerner was neither given a custodial sentence nor fined, there is a disparity between the crime he has committed and the punishment received.

Safeguarding Children

When somebody in a prominent position of responsibility has sex with a 16-year-old girl, there is a clear safeguarding issue. It is very unlikely that Kerner didn’t know that what he was doing was wrong. This has not been challenged in the articles, but is mentioned here to clarify the legal position. Safeguarding training is a matter of course of all teachers now, and this includes provisions on dealing with infatuations. Schools have designated people with responsibility for safeguarding: Usually the head teacher if it’s a primary school, and a member of the senior management team in a secondary school. Kerner may have been in a position to have responsibility for safeguarding; he might even have delivered the training himself. It is inconceivable that he wouldn’t have known that the act of sex with a student was wrong, the consequences of being discovered, and that the correct thing to do would have been to report it as a safeguarding concern while discreetly maintaining the dignity of all the people involved.

Victim Blaming

In this case, there has been a disturbing climate of blaming the victim for the crime. Judge Joanna Greenberg QC said that the girl targeted Kerner at an “emotionally vulnerable” time. She was also quoted to have justified her decision by saying of the victim: “If grooming is the right word to use, it was she who groomed you, [and] you gave in to temptation.”[3] If there is any truth in this, it does not diminish the fact that Kerner has broken the law, and is indisputably the perpetrator of the crime. And yet, for these reasons, he has a non-custodial sentence.

In Gaby Hinsliff’s article, she also says that the girl was described by the judge as ‘“vulnerable and needy [with] a troubled home life”; she had a history of attention-seeking behaviour, including pretending to have been in an accident.[4]’ She compares this to similarly described girls who were singled out and targeted for abuse by gangs of older men in Rotherham and Rochdale, where in those cases the authorities were condemned for failing to aid those girls from troubled backgrounds. This is a stark contrast to the suspended sentence given to a deputy head who “fails to see something unhealthy in a troubled 16-year-old’s adoration.”[5] Why was the perpetrator, in this case, not dealt with in a similar way?

Julie Bindel’s article highlights this situation in a climate of victim-blaming culture that has been around since the 1980’s[6]. Arguably, the culture has been going on for even longer; Bindel’s examples begin in the 80’s and end with her most recent example of Bob Bellew in April 2014. She appears to suggest that the culture of blaming the victim is nothing new, and the fact that the case of Stuart Kerner was decided by a female judge apparently did very little to break the trend.

Bindel has been criticised for this point by some of the people who read the article, as the examples she gives are of rape, sexual abuse and sexual assault – none of which are the specific offence that Kerner has been convicted for. She is also criticised for failing to recognise that the judge would have reached her decision by examining the facts of the case, and deciding it on their merits. On the former criticism, we would argue that in all of those situations, there is a culture of blaming the victim, and there are many cases every year where this happens. On the latter, while we recognise that the judge decided the case on its merits, we would still challenge the disparity between the nature of the crime and the sentence received.

Reducing Responsibility for the Perpetrator

Judge Greenberg commented that it was an “emotionally vulnerable” time for Stuart Kerner.[7] The emotional vulnerability she refers to is that Kerner’s wife had a difficult pregnancy, and had miscarried on the week he had sex with his student.

This is a situation where the judgement was made on the merits of the case, and Judge Greenberg is within her rights to reduce the sentence on whatever grounds she wishes – paying heed to the possibility that she may be challenged on it.[8] Her opinion gives rise to the notion that it was the student who groomed Kerner – despite the fact that the student could not legally do so, and despite Kerner’s breach of both the law and his responsibility as a teacher.

Conclusion

It is a solid fact that Stuart Kerner was in clear breach of the law and his responsibility. It is less clear how Joanna Greenberg QC arrived at the conclusion that his student had groomed him. While she recognises that Kerner failed to act with the responsibly and restraint expect of him, she has received harsh criticism for the sentence being too lenient, and her judgement appears to be blaming the victim for the crime.

This highlights the wider issue of how the legal system perceives and deals with cases such as this. Too often, there is an ill-proportioned amount of blame and responsibility put on the victims of sex crimes, and not enough consideration for the fact that the perpetrators have broken the law. This creates an environment where the laws designed to protect people from sex crimes can be creatively interpreted, poorly applied and in some cases almost completely ignored. How, then, can it be said that the law protects victims of such crimes?

The situation with Stuart Kerner ought to serve as a cautionary tale. His student appears to have conducted herself in a manner that was conducive to Kerner committing the crime – yet the law says that the responsibility for her safety and his actions fall squarely on Kerner’s shoulders. Having avoided a custodial sentence, and being on a suspended sentence for eighteen months, we might wonder if anything has been learned from this at all.



Footnote:

After some research, we have not been able to find any information relating to how Bexleyheath Academy – Kerner’s former school – handled the matter. All we can say for certain at this time is that Kerner was charged in August 2013 during the summer holidays.[9]



[9] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-23551353

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