Schoolboy in High Court to challenge expulsion

A schoolboy has brought a High Court challenge to his expulsion from a school over an incident during a school charity football match when, after the boy tugged at the back of a young male teacher's football shorts, the shorts fell to expose the teacher's buttock.

The 16-year-old fifth-year student had told his mother he "had a rush of blood to the head" after saving a penalty for the students' side during a penalty shoot-out in the closing stages of the match last November.

He had raced up behind the teacher, who was also playing in the game along with another teacher, and tugged at his shorts from behind, the student's mother said. Her son told her he thought the shorts were held by the string in the normal way but they were not and they fell about seven inches, displaying the teacher's buttock. There was a dispute about how far the shorts fell, she added.

The boy's mother said her son was immediately remorseful and realised he had acted stupidly and disrespectfully towards a teacher for whom he has enormous respect. She said the teacher at that point appeared to accept the incident as no more than a disrespectful and stupid prank and had later joked about it with her son in the changing rooms.

However, he was later suspended and was ultimately expelled. He was now in another school where he had had to take up new subjects and he was finding the demands of those difficult.

Her son's behaviour on the pitch was poor, disrespectful and stupid but she believed the school's response to his unpremeditated and stupid gesture, for which he had sincerely apologised, was "grossly unfair".

She and her husband were particularly "dumbfounded" and concerned that a later decision of an appeals committee of the Department of Education rejecting an appeal against the expulsion had specified as a ground for the expulsion that he was somehow engaged in harassment and/or sexual harassment of the teacher.

This was the first mention of such a serious and "manifestly untrue" allegation which had not been put to her son by the school authorities. To introduce such a "finding" at this stage was "nothing short of outrageous".

Her son hoped to become a garda and feared that the expulsion and the allegation of harassment/sexual harassment would stand as a black mark against him, she said. The purpose of his High Court proceedings was to have his suspensions and expulsion quashed as having been unfairly made.

Mr Justice Michael Peart yesterday granted leave to the boy, suing through his mother, to bring a judicial review challenge in which he is seeking orders quashing his suspensions and later expulsion as having been unfairly made and in breach of his rights under the Constitution and the Education (Welfare) Act.

The action is against the board of management of the school in question and the appeal committee who dismissed the boy's appeal. It is claimed the respondents breached fair procedures and the boy's rights in relation to how they dealt with the matter.

It is alleged the boy was suspended by the school principal in late November, the day after the match incident, without prior notice to his parents.

The boy had also, in what his mother described as an unprompted gesture, brought a letter of apology to the school for the teacher. That letter "made matters worse" because her son had referred in it to the teacher by his first name, a practice which the teacher appeared to have encouraged on the sports field, she said.