Former Toowoomba private school boy who alleges relationship with female teacher was labelled ‘the chosen one’, court hears

A former Queensland private school boy who alleges he had a two-year relationship with a female teacher says other students joked about their close bond, labelling him ‘the chosen one’ and the ‘teacher’s pet’.

File picture: The offences are alleged to have happened at a Toowoomba boarding school.

A former Toowoomba private school boy who alleges he had a two-year relationship with a female teacher says other students regularly joked about their close bond, asking him to ‘hook them up’ with the woman and labelling him ‘the chosen one’ and the ‘teacher’s pet’.

The man is suing his former teacher who was twice his age when she allegedly initiated an intimate relationship with him when he was only 13 at a Toowoomba boarding school.

He has given evidence during a civil trial in the Brisbane Supreme Court that their bond and the large amount of time they spent together was the subject of regular discussion by other students in his boarding house who labelled him as ‘the chosen one’, ‘the special one’ and the ‘teacher’s pet’.

“It got to a stage where the boys in the (boarding) house ... were asking questions, some of them even asked if I could hook them up with (the teacher),” he said.

“The innuendo was just running rife.

“They’d ask me what colour (pubic hair) she has and things like that, they’d ask me that and all these rumours were just swirling around and I was known as the guy who was with the teacher and I become a bit of an outcast and it was really hard to talk to anyone because I was simply known as that guy.”

The man, who had been a bright student and held senior positions on the school’s cricket and football teams, said his behaviour and attitude suffered due to the relationship.

“It just disintegrated from being a polite boy and a nice boy to someone who challenged authority and was argumentative,” he said.

“I (put in) no effort, I didn’t respect many of the other teachers because I knew I had (the teacher) and she’d protect me and it just sort of went downhill.”

He claims the school “fabricated” a reason to kick him out after his parents confronted the school after finding love notes between the teacher and their son which prompted her to resign and cut ties with the boy.

He attended several other schools after getting kicked out but said the rumours about the relationship followed him.

“When I was going through the different schools… even at (a state high school) people would say to me: ‘oh I’ve heard about you, you’re the guy who got kicked out of (the school) because of the teacher, right?’.”

“Word spreads. That followed me for a long, long time. And that’s why I didn’t want to go anywhere … I just didn’t want to hear it.”

The man’s Barrister Brian Dooley SC asked if the comments were made in circumstances where the people felt sorry for him.

“No, no, no they’d look at you like you’re amazing,” he said.

“And they say I wish I was you or I had that teacher and the things teenage boys would say.

“Nothing was ever are you okay, does it hurt.”

Mr Dooley asked how that made him feel.

“When I was younger I thought it was pretty good, I thought I was the king, absolutely,” he said.

“But as I matured I hated it because in a sense that’s who I am now.

“That’s my identity and that’s not what I want in life.”

The man gave evidence that he was “heartbroken and angry” when the woman left and his relationship with his parents significantly suffered and he lost interest in his education.

“It was a disaster, it was an absolute disaster,” he said.

“I fought with mum and dad all the time. Sometimes it was so trivial I was so angry at the world I didn’t even think, I didn’t even know I was hurting anyone, I didn’t even know at the time how upset I was.

“We fought all the time and a lot of the time the conversation would be, and I’d yell at mum and dad: ‘you didn’t even protect me, you didn’t do anything about it, I was a little boy and you did nothing’, and my mum would look at me and she’d be crying and say, ‘we didn’t know what (she) was doing, we didn’t know, you didn’t tell us’.”

He said he struggled for years to tell his parents about the relationship but started opening up around 2016 when he first approached Shine Lawyers to discuss his case.

“I still haven’t told them everything because I won’t because I don’t want them to hear all the details,” he said.

The trial continues.