MP's Call For CCTV in UK Classrooms
London
Observer | July 11 2004
MPs are urging that CCTV cameras be introduced
into classrooms as a way of helping teachers accused of abuse prove their
innocence.
The call from the all-party group for abuse
investigations comes at a time when the number of allegations has soared
while the number of convictions has plummeted.
'Teachers are exceptionally vulnerable and have no form
of defence against false and malicious allegations,' said Claire Curtis-Thomas,
Labour MP for Crosby, who chairs the group.
'There is absolute understanding over how important CCTV
is in providing documentary evidence of events outside the classroom, so
why shouldn't that tool be applied inside the classroom as well?'
Almost 2,000 members of the National Association for Schoolmasters
and Union of Women Teachers have been investigated by police in the past
decade.
Last year 187 were accused, compared with just 44 in 1991.
In the same period, the number of convictions fell from 11 per cent to 2
per cent, with two-thirds of cases dropped after a school inquiry.
Chris Keates, the union's acting general secretary, said:
'Many teachers facing malicious allegations cannot sustain family relationships,
have nervous breakdowns and cannot return to the classroom when their ordeal
is over.'
The National Union of Teachers reported 209 members seeking
help after being accused in 2003, with another 136 doing so this year already.
'Almost 60 per cent of these accusations were found to
be invalid,' said a spokeswoman. 'But the idea of putting cameras in the
classroom is uncomfortable. Some might feel concern that it would be misused
for management, rather than protection purposes. Who would have access to
the film? There are a lot of questions that need to be asked in a school
before teachers would agree to it.'
In 1999, Robert O'Brien - then headmaster at St Mary's
Hall, Lancashire, one of Britain's leading Roman Catholic public schools
- was accused of leading a regime of child abuse at the college allegedly
dating back to 1972.
After being sentenced to three years' imprisonment, he
spent six weeks in prison before the Court of Appeal cleared him. 'I was
accused by two former students about something that had supposedly happened
30 years before and for which there was no evidence apart from their word
against mine,' he said.
'It was horrific and even though I was totally exonerated
by the court, my life has been ruined because few people really believe
that children will pluck accusations of abuse out of thin air.'
O'Brien is now chairman of Fact, the Falsely Accused Carers
and Teachers group.
The call for cameras in the classroom was welcomed by Mark
Newby, director of the historical abuse appeals panel, which helps to draw
up imprisoned teachers' applications to the Criminal Cases Review Commission.
'False and malicious allegations by students are
made for two reasons: a student can see it as a way of getting back at a
teacher they dislike, or they could be motivated by a desire to profit from
compensation,' he said.
