Revealed: Sydney teachers whose crimes rocked school communities
They are the disgraced teachers whose behaviour towards children landed each of them before a court. Now the shocking crimes they committed — which left students, parents and schools devastated — can be revealed. READ ABOUT THE CASES.
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Teachers hold very special positions in our community – teaching and nurturing our children.
From ages four to 18, we heavily rely on our teachers to help guide and shape our child’s future.
However, there have been shocking cases of disgraceful behaviour from teachers across NSW that have emerged this year in our courtrooms – with some facing lengthy jail sentences.
Here are some of the more serious cases that have left parents and the community both devastated and outraged.
Hunter PE teacher had secret affair with student
Katie Smith, of Wyee, has been convicted and sent to jail after a secret affair with a 14-year-old student.
The former PE teacher was sentenced to three years and 10 months jail with a non-parole period of two years and three months in the Newcastle District Court on September 4 2020.
She pleaded guilty to grooming a child for unlawful sexual activity, indecent assault of a person under 16 and intentionally sexually touching a child between 10 and 16.
The court heard Smith, 28, started a secret relationship with a the student in late 2018, befriending him on Snapchat where the pair exchanged explicit images and videos – one of which included Smith rubbing her genitalia area. They also secretly met up on several occasions including the school storeroom and a carpark where they would kiss and “fondle”.
The court heard Smith, who had gone through a break up with her husband, never wanted to have sex with the student but wanted to be told she was pretty.
Judge Kara Shead said Smith had a abused her position of trust as a teacher.
“She preyed upon the vulnerability of the student, she exploited his vulnerability,” she said.
Former Cabramatta High School teacher drove car at students
Michael Araco thought driving his car at students onto a basketball court would be a funny prank to play on the last day of school, a court heard.
The southwest Sydney teacher pleaded guilty to common assault in July 2020 and was sentenced to a two-year conditional release order without conviction.
The court heard Araco drove his car “up a gutter, along a pathway that students walk along and onto the basketball courts” on December 17 2019. He even performed one and a half loops around a student.
“It was the final day of school. Mr Araco thought that the students would find it funny … to see a car on the basketball courts,” his barrister stated.
Magistrate Joanne Keogh told Araco his attempt at humour was “foolish” and “immature”, however noting that no one was injured.
“I do accept your explanation that this was a foolish attempt at humour, a hijinks of the very worst kind.”
Mr Araco was removed from the school by the Education Department.
Katoomba High School teacher jailed for sex with student
Gavin Malcolm Duncan, 32, of Jamisontown pleaded guilty to three counts of having sexual intercourse with a person in his care.
He was sentenced to serve at least seven months behind bars in June 2020, with an additional eight months on parole over his sexual relationship with a 17-year-old student at Katoomba High School.
The court heard the teacher had sex with a female student three times and told her to wear a skirt to school so he could “f*** her in the classroom”.
Police said Duncan would speak to the student about school issues and personal issues, with their conversations becoming “flirtatious”.
The relationship progressed when he gave the teen his mobile number and they began texting outside of school hours.
Duncan paid for a Uber to drop her off at his Glenmore Park home so they could have sex, while on another occasion the pair arranged to meet again at his home.
In mid-2019, rumours about the pair’s relationship began spreading through the school and Duncan told the teen to deny their relationship. He was suspended from the school in June 2019 after confessing to a fellow teacher.
Ex-Goulburn teacher Cassandra Hingeley molested a teen boy she used to teach
Cassandra Hingeley was sentenced to 11 months behind bars in January 2020 for sexually touching a child between 10 and 16 years and inciting a child between 10 and 16 to sexually touch.
The court heard flirty Instagram messages led to a late night meet up with a teenage boy she used to teach.
Court documents stated Hingeley first met the boy several years ago while he was a student at the primary school she taught at. The pair exchanged messages and photos via social media and discussed possibilities of meeting up and having sex.
They ended up meeting at a beach, where the court heard they “kissed and hugged”. The pair then started to “touch each other”. According to the documents, with the consent of the teenager, Hingeley started to stroke his groin area from the outside of his pants, before he began to touch her breasts and vagina.
Hingeley was arrested after the boy told a Life Without Barriers employee about the tryst.
Magistrate Jillian Kiely labelled her behaviour as an abuse of power.
“She was a teacher and this type of offending needs to be dealt with utter denunciation,” she said. “She knew him (the boy) from teaching and it’s important that children attending our schools are safe”.
Teacher stole medication from student doing HSC
St Gregory’s College teacher Michael Peter McGuiggan was convicted for stealing Ritalin from a HSC student.
The former Campbelltown private school teacher was caught red handed stealing the student’s prescription medication from a locked safe.
McGuiggan, 33, pleaded guilty in February 2020 to stealing the Ritalin pills on three occasions in June and July last year. The prescription medication, commonly used to treat ADHD, was stored in a pin-locked safe which could only be accessed by five staff members.
In June 2019, the college’s senior boarding co-ordinator discovered a box of 20 Ritalin pills had gone missing from one of the safes. This resulted in staff searching the rooms of more than 50 students. On another occasion, the boarding co-ordinator inspected the safe to discover another 18 Ritalin pills, prescribed to the same HSC student, was stolen.
When the principal installed CCTV cameras, McGuiggan was caught.
Magistrate Ian Guy said the crimes required a “level of planning” and he was in a “position of trust”.
“(The school) had a system in place that should have, in normal circumstances, provide protection (to the prescription medication),” he said.
McGuiggan was convicted, fined $800 and placed on an 18-month good behaviour bond.
Inner west teacher jailed for sex act with student
A judge said Stuart Robert Van Dyken would never teach again, when sentencing him to jail in August 2020.
The 52-year-old, found guilty of having sex with a child under his special care and inciting a child over 16 to perform an act of indecency, was jailed for three years with a minimum of 18 months.
The court heard that the Leppington man, a father of two, was talking with the girl alone in his office and asked her if she would give him oral sex “right now” in a nearby classroom.
The girl went to the classroom, feeling pressures but eventually told him “she couldn’t do it”.
She tried to escape, a court heard, but he persisted and encouraged her. She then briefly performed the oral sex act
Van Dyken later told her: “My life’s in your hands. I have children, I won’t be able to see them. My job’s in your hands”.
Judge Penelope Hock called this “psychological pressure” which made the offending worse.
“He was a person (she was) entitled to look for guidance and protection and he grossly abused the trust placed in him as a schoolteacher,” Judge Hock said.
Knox Grammar teacher and surf lifesaver jailed over child porn stash
A loveable young teacher from one of Sydney’s most exclusive private school pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography in September 2020.
Nick Warby, the disgraced Knox Grammar former head of aquatic sports, has been jailed for two years and four months.
The court heard Warby, 31, enjoyed the rush of looking at child abuse material and had a hidden stash of the material.
While specifics of the graphic material Warby’s had were too disturbing to publish, the court heard they involved images of children being sexually abused and crying in horrific circumstances.
Warby, who was also a surf life saver on the northern beaches, picked up material trawling chatrooms where other online perverts would share links. His stash of the sickly material was uncovered by a colleague after he left his phone at the school pool.
Detectives went on to find 3400 images and videos on five devices of Warby’s.
“I’ve done wrong … I’m ashamed and I’m going to cop the punishment,” Warby said to officers, the court heard.
Reddam House teacher to be sentenced for sex with teenage student
In September 2020, former Reddam School teacher Ben Fenner pleaded guilty to having a sexual relationship with a teenage student.
A court heard the teacher targeted and groomed the teenage student and initiated a series of sex acts, acknowledging in court that he knew the teen was emotionally vulnerable.
Fenner, 35, texted sexually charged messages on WhatsApp to the student who had been experiencing a stressful family situation. The biology teacher told the victim “all the messages on here are encrypted which is great for secrets”.
Across a three-month period in 2018, the teacher engaged in 15 consensual sex acts with the student, often unprotected, at beaches and homes in the eastern suburbs and Central Coast.
On one occasion Fenner bought the student a sex toy and made her use it in front of him.
The victim recently gave a powerful victim impact statement, staring down Fenner in court.
“He should’ve stopped … he knew the rules. You have taken so much away from me, my friends and my high school experience. I am so glad I reported it before he would do it to someone else,” she said. He will be sentenced in the coming weeks.
Sydney teacher called himself ‘Daddy Knowles’
Daniel Mark Knowles, an Australian teacher who had a stint working in the UK, sent his underage former students explicit images and videos of him having sex with his wife calling himself “daddy Knowles”.
One of the girls, who lives in the UK, told a court she has “scars that will never fade” with the abuse triggering an eating disorder and multiple suicide attempts.
In June 2020, Daniel Mark Knowles pleaded guilty to two counts of using a phone to send indecent material to a person under 16-years-old and one count of using a phone to solicit child pornography.
The 31-year-old teacher was working in England’s south west as a Year 10 tutor in 2017. Back in Australia, he struck up conversations over social media with two former students, sending photographs of himself naked and a video of a woman giving him oral sex in a bathroom.
At a sleepover the two girls told each other about the messages and a group chat with Knowles was created and called “Daddy Knowles & His Naughty Girls”, where more material was sent.
One of the girls became distressed by the content and alerted someone. The Australian Federal Police, in January 2019, raided the family home of Knowles’ fiance where he was living.