Students ‘groomed and seduced’ by teachers

Ex-students of Port Macquarie High say they were “targeted, groomed and seduced’’ into sexual relationships with teachers.

Former Port Macquarie High School student Debra Hood yesterday. Picture: Glenn Hunt

Former students of Port Macquarie High School say they were “targeted, groomed and seduced” into sexual relationships with teachers, and are investigating legal action against the NSW Education Department.

Two women, now in their 50s, say teachers from the school drew them into sexual relationships in the 1980s when they were 17.

A third woman has told of a teacher’s sexual advances when they were socialising at a local hotel when she was 15.

The women linked up after The Teacher’s Pet podcast revealed widespread teacher-student relationships on Sydney’s northern beaches in the same period.

They have formed a Facebook group, Teacher’s Pets Released, and say their experiences may be the tip of the iceberg in the town, 380km north of Sydney.

Debra Hood, centre, in a Year 10 class photo.

Debra Hood said a teacher befriended her in the playground, came to her home to meet her parents and gave her a necklace and a key to his flat.

She was from a troubled home, with her late mother battling ­alcoholism, when she had sex with the teacher at the age of 17.

Ms Hood said she was left feeling “ashamed and humiliated” and was dismayed when the teacher made identical moves on a younger girl. “Something went badly wrong in the NSW education system,” she said.

Another woman, who asked to be named only as Nicole, said under­age students regularly drank at the Port Macquarie Hotel, where teachers also gathered, and at a local nightclub.

She was singled out by a teacher when she was depressed and isolated from other events. “It transitioned from having drinks and hanging out to him taking me home in his car to him having sex with me in his car,” she said.

Debra Hood (holding yellow towel) speaks with fellow Port Macquarie High School students during a Year 10 science excursion in 1979. Picture: Supplied

Senior staff called her into a meeting, with another student witness, and accused her of ­showing the teacher “unwanted attention”.

Once on a night out he told her she was “just the girl of the year”, bursting her bubble that she was “special”. For a period after the relationship, her life spiralled further out of control.

In both cases, no crime was committed because the legal age of consent was 16, and it was only illegal at the time for a teacher to have sex with a student under 17.

A third former student said she was drinking at the Port Macquarie Hotel at 15 when she was propositioned by a teacher and went to his car. When he groped her, she pushed him away and he called her a “prick tease”. The next week at school, she couldn’t complete a task in his class. “He looked at me in front of the whole class, I’ll never forget it, and said ‘Well there’s lots of things you won’t do isn’t there?’,” the woman said.

Lawyer Steve Kerin has provided legal advice to Ms Hood and Nicole and says the women have grounds to sue the Education Department or could seek compensation through the national redress scheme. “The school administration was negligent in failing to ensure these young women were protected from predatory behaviour of which they knew or ought to have known,” he said.

The Education Department said it would support any past or present student in taking abuse ­allegations to police.