A sex offender that can’t be named

“I was approached by a male wanting to talk to me regarding sexual grooming at a school”, began the report from an unnamed Police Community Support Officer. The man in question had cornered the PCSO outside an Asda on 8th December 2023 and reportedly began “by saying he was not crazy,” although the officer appears to have taken this with a grain of salt. “The male appeared to have mental health issues,” the report concludes. 

This man told the PCSO that he worked at a school in South Yorkshire, one he was in the process of suing. “Because of this, he said he was not really supposed to talk about it,” the officer recalls, although he seemed compelled to unburden himself anyway. The head of safeguarding at his school, this man told the officer, was married to and lived with a convicted paedophile. Not only that, but her husband’s crimes were committed while he was a primary school teacher, exploiting his position to abuse multiple girls. He was therefore on the sex offender’s register for life. 

Unbeknownst to the sceptical officer, this last fact was entirely true. The man — who this article will refer to as Edward — was hired at a council-run school in early 2019 and learned about his colleague’s circumstances during a conversation with another member of staff later that year. He found it profoundly disturbing. His colleague, who this article will call Alice, had a role which meant she was responsible for protecting extremely vulnerable students. At the same time, she was in an intimate relationship with someone who could never be trusted to work with children again. 

When Edward tried to discuss his concerns, he felt his fears were far too easily dismissed. For example, when another teacher at the school mentioned being friends with both Alice and her husband, Edward replied by pointing out that he was a sex offender. This teacher allegedly responded that Alice’s husband was a nice man who had taught her to play guitar and that she had sat on his knee; an anecdote he found disturbing given the context. Alice’s husband had pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting multiple young girls, with at least two victims having been assaulted repeatedly, and had spent five years in jail as a result. His crime was only uncovered after the girls spoke to their parents. 

In January 2023, the day after he confronted Alice about her husband directly for the first and only time, Edward claims the school’s then-headteacher instructed him not to speak about the matter in front of other staff again. “Not everyone knows,” she allegedly told him. When he asked if the situation was being kept secret, he claims that she quickly shut the conversation down. That same day, finding the situation untenable, he signed off work due to stress and informed an employee at the council about Alice’s situation, requesting that he be treated as a whistleblower. The council employee later told him there was nothing to worry about but, despite this assurance, his suspicions continued to grow. As the head of safeguarding, Alice had a close working relationship with safeguarding staff at the council too.

Though Edward now concedes that Alice is not a danger to children, back then he wasn’t so sure. The PCSO’s report from 8th December 2023 notes that Edward said outside Asda that he feared that Alice, her husband and other colleagues at the school “were all part of a grooming gang”. He resigned from the school later that month, having never returned to work since being signed off at the start of the year. 

Edward is now suing the school for £261,000 in damages, alleging he was treated unfairly because of the concerns he raised and that this eventually forced him to leave his job. He insists Alice most likely knew from 2019 onwards that he was aware of her husband’s convictions and conspired to make his work life difficult as a result. The council, on their part, denies that he was treated poorly, denies Alice was even aware he knew until January 2023 and argues Edward became “fixated” on her husband, even after receiving information that should have reassured him about the situation. 

During Edward’s civil suit against the school, which was finally heard this month, the school’s current headteacher and a lawyer representing the council insisted that Alice’s continued employment at the school is entirely safe. What they argue would be harmful, however, is if the general public learned the full details of this case — an argument the court accepted. The court therefore ruled on Tuesday that it would be a criminal offence if the Tribune’s reporting ever named the school, any of the individuals involved or even the South Yorkshire council that runs the school.