Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

PAEDOPHILE

Paedophile teacher fired after Google search

Authorities fired a teacher at a school in the canton of Zurich after learning by accident through a Google search that he was a recently convicted paedophile, according to a TV report aired on Wednesday.

Published: 12 June 2013 21:45 CEST
Paedophile teacher fired after Google search
Nänikon-Greifensee secondary school. Photo: SRF/Screenshot

The 51-year-old man was fired last month from the Nänikon-Greifensee school after it was discovered he was convicted for possession of child pornography in 2011 by a Zurich district court, according to a news programme on the German-language SRF network.

The court sentenced the man to a suspended prison term of 15 months and fined him 1,000 francs, Schweiz Aktuell reported.

The man was also earlier convicted for sexually abusing children in Thailand, where he was freed after payment of a surety, the news report said.

Schweiz Aktuell said school authorities only learned of the man’s past through a Google search.

Hansruedi Ammann, chairman of the school commission for Nänikon-Greifensee, confirmed the facts in the broadcast when contacted by the SDA news agency.

Ammann said it was on May 27th that he became aware from another teacher of the man’s past.

The same day the Zurich cantonal education office fired the teacher with immediate effect.

Ammann informed parents in a letter obtained by SDA that an administrative investigation has been launched into the matter.

The news agency said that the man was interviewed before the decision was made to sack him.

The confirmed the past convictions but maintained that the accusations against him were unjustified and that he never abused children, SDA said.

The school commission said the accusations were too serious to allow the man to continue teaching.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

TEACHERS

Teacher in Sweden reported to police for ejecting rude pupil

Sweden's teachers union has rushed to defend a teacher reported to the police for physically removing a 15-year-old boy who called his colleague a "whore".

Published: 16 March 2019 17:09 CET
Teacher in Sweden reported to police for ejecting rude pupil
The use of mobile phones was banned in lessons at the school. Photo: Jessica Gow/TT
A boy at a school in Nybro municipality near Kalmar first refused to hand over his mobile phone at the start of the lesson, and then when his teacher admonished him, he called her “hora”, which means “whore” and is highly offensive in Swedish. 
 
Her colleague then threw the boy out of the classroom, after which his parents reported the teacher to the police. 
 
“As a teacher, you need to have the option of admonishing a pupil and giving sanctions when they break the rules,”
Åsa Fahlén, the head of Sweden's teacher's union, told TT.  “It is completely unreasonable that this should be seen as abusive in and of itself.” 
 
The parents' decision to report the teacher to the police has generated heated debate in Sweden since the case was first reported on Tuesday.
 
“In a decent, well-functioning family, it's not OK to call a teacher a whore and then report them to the police,” Lasse Johansson, chairman of the local municipal education department told the local Barometern newspaper. 
 
Jimmy Loord, an MP for the Christian Democrats, told the newspaper that the case marked “a worrying development which underlined the need to make the various roles in schools clearer”. 
 
Fahlén argued that while it was important that teachers behaved appropriately in the schoolroom, they needed to be able to admonish pupils who got out of line. 
 
“There's a risk that we can get to an untenable situation where almost anything can constitute an offence,” she said. “We need to define clearly what an offence is.” 
 
She said that there was an urgent need for the Swedish National Agency for Education to investigate the issue and produce clear guidelines of what behaviour from teachers was appropriate. 
SHOW COMMENTS