The Strange Scotsman (Part the Fourth)

Continuing the tale.

I would recommend that if you are reading my blog for the first time that you go back and start from The Strange Scotsman

I restarted my investigation into this guy after I heard from two of our office ladies that he'd been pestering them.  He had decided to come into their offices uninvited, plonk himself down on a chair and started to "chat them up".  No matter how many hints he'd been given, he just sat and talked.  He wasn't even on relief duties, and just turned up.  One of the  ladies told me: "Sorry to say this about a fellow Scot TSB, but he's beginning to creep me out"

Creepy

At this time I'd also got feedback from the students who had been in his classes when he relieved last week, and so far it didn't seem so bad.  A couple of the students mentioned that they noticed his voice was similar to mine, but nothing he did seemed strange.

The Strange Scotsman appeared outside my office again, this time for a genuine purpose.  To allow our relieving teachers to get paid at an appropriate rate, they (and I) have to fill out numerous forms, listing previous education, degrees gained, and schools at which he had taught.  He needed certified copies of these documents, which our Principal had to sign to authenticate them.

He left all the forms with me for my signature, and for passing onto the boss for his approval.

Strange...

The section on previous employment did not list actual schools, but listed some Scottish councils who had employed him.

This is a school as you might remember it

I have to digress a moment.

In Scotland, teachers are not employed directly be a school, but are contracted to a county council, who then assigns them to a particular school, so it was not unheard of listing the councils concerned, but it is normal to also add the actual school where he normally worked.

This is a school as we now experience it.

There was not one school mentioned on the list.

A Police Record

I checked back with the New Zealand Teaching Council, and yes, JV had provisional Registration.  This meant that he'd undergone the normally quite rigorous procedure of checking police records and previous teaching qualifications and experience.

A criminal record

 Another thing that bothered me was that when he had dropped in with the forms, he had chatted, actually he had lectured me on his superior characteristics as an officer and fighting man, magnificent teacher and all round superman.

An all round superman

He was definitely beginning to get on my nerves. But what stuck out was that he had mentioned in passing his familiarity and overall excellence in dealing with logistics.  He was a Loggie.  He was what used to be Royal Corps of Transport (RCT), now known as the Royal Logistics Corps, and these guys don't normally get too involved in the actual fighting, being too busy driving trucks and moving and storing pallets of ammo, food etc.

A much nicer Superperson

I got in touch with some contacts in the Army and started researching JV's military career.

Now many ex-Army, officers and men do tend to exaggerate their military experience.  If you made a list of all the so-called Paras and SAS who boast in pubs and clubs across the world, and compare them to actual Regimental numbers, they don't add up.  It's not a huge thing, but it bothered me.  If he was telling porkies about his combat experience, what else was he dissembling about?

An extreme example.  Was a part time cop in Ulster, says he was SAS and just about everything else.  See here.

My contacts got back to me with the information that:
He was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the RCT (TAVR) [Territorial Army Volunteer Reserve]
He was promoted to Lieutenant a year or so later, then he seemed to disappear from the rolls. (Probably resigned)

I've got absolutely nothing against the TAVR, I was TAVR at the start, but TAVR officers didn't normally get called up for service in the Balkans, and they almost certainly don't get involved in shooting trenches up with a 9mm pistol.

Then I hit the jackpot. 

I called a couple of friends teaching in Scotland who accessed the Scottish General Teaching Council (GTC) Register, and found the real dirt.

He had been employed by a School in Glasgow, but they had serious reservations about some of his teaching methods.

I've listed their concerns below.  These were described in his hearing at the GTC.

WARNING

Some of the language used is verbatim and may shock those of a delicate predisposition.

Mind you all the delicate flowers should know better than to be on this blog anyway.



1 He did  assault a pupil, by throwing a chalkboard duster at him.


2 He did conduct himself in a disorderly manner and shout and swear in the presence of 5 pupils

3 He did communicate in an inappropriate and indecent manner with a pupil in that he made reference to prostitutes and used words like “shagging prostitutes" and "shagging whores" in the presence of another pupil

4 He did communicate in an inappropriate and indecent manner with pupils in that he did make reference to the medical symptoms of gonorrhoea and used words like "custard would be dripping out of her clit" and "yellow pus from a clit' in the presence of two female pupils

Custard anyone?

5 He did communicate in an inappropriate manner with a pupil in that he did make offensive comments by using words like "sluts" and "all women are sluts" in the presence of a female pupil.

6 He did communicate in an inappropriate manner with a pupil in that he did make offensive comments by using words like "poofs" in the presence of a pupil.

7 He did  communicate in an inappropriate and indecent manner with a pupil by using words like "that’s what happens when the boys play with themselves" in the presence of another pupil. (He was referring to killing enemy troops in the Balkans)

8 He did communicate in an inappropriate manner with pupils by stating that he had killed people when he was a member of the armed forces in the presence of two pupils

9 He did  fail to maintain an appropriate professional boundary with a male pupil by taking hold of him, bending him over at the waist and reaching down between his legs.

10 He did fail to maintain an appropriate professional boundary with pupils in that he bared his chest in class to show a tattoo in the presence of a female pupil.

11 He did on 7 January 2011 whilst a Respondent with the General Teaching Council for Scotland fail to engage in a reasonable manner with the General Teaching Council for Scotland’s complaints process in that he did e-mail Mark Paxton, Investigating Officer with the General Teaching Council for Scotland using words like "do not contact me again" and "any further correspondence sent to me will be returned to you unopened" and "all GTC addresses will now also be blocked from my e-mail".

And to round it all up, when he was called to attend his final hearing with the GTC complaints and standards committee, he phoned in to say he was dead.  He did say he was his brother, who, on further examination, didn't even exist.


I should like to say in his mitigation that I personally find nothing particularly wrong with item 8, and 2 isn't that bad, while I'm sure that occasionally a blackboard duster may accidentally have dropped from my hand at a great velocity as in 1. But the rest...

And this guy had NZTC registration?

I'll try and finish this as soon as I can.

I'm also a wee bit sorry fro the length of this post, but it was intimated to me by several readers to hurry up with the bloody cliff-hanger... or else.

"Finish it, or else TSB" she said