A teacher at a school in central Israel was questioned by police Thursday on suspicions of sexually assaulting a female student in his eighth-grade class.
The 14-year-old student filed a complaint with police about a week ago. She said that the teacher sexually assaulted her during a private tutoring session, and proposed meeting with her in her room during the annual school trip.
The teacher denies all the allegations.
The principal and Education Ministry allowed the teacher to continue teaching in the school, while keeping him separated from the girl’s class. The teacher was offered the option of going on paid vacation, but he refused, saying that such a step could be interpreted as an admission of guilt, said a source.
Students demonstrated near the school and called for the teacher to be kept out. In a video clip of the protest on the Channel 2 news website Wednesday, the principal can be heard saying: “There is a very, very large distance between the facts and the imagination, this is matter of life and death – there is a person here who has children and a family, and your zealousness is out of proportion.”
The principal said the students were trying to hold a kangaroo court: “What’s happened to you? It doesn’t work that way.” He said the teacher would not be kept out for now and the students “needed to trust him, and us, that we are protecting you. You’ve gone crazy, simply crazy.”
Education Ministry officials said that to keep the teacher away from the school, officials must hold a hearing for him and receive the approval of the education minister or the ministry’s director general.
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Because the incident is under police investigation, it was decided not to hold the hearing to avoid interfering with the probe, said Education Ministry officials.
That is the reason that the school is allowed to keep the teacher out of the classroom of the girl involved, but it is not possible to keep him out of school.
The teacher’s lawyer, Omer Balali, said the teacher is a “moral person who left a successful career to contribute to the educational system. As opposed to the claims made against him, the teacher has never sexually harassed any young woman and has never been ordered to keep away from anyone. The teacher is cooperating with the school staff and with any other body required on the matter.”
Balali urged everyone, “and especially the students and parents of the school, to be patient, not to spread rumors, not to hold a kangaroo court and not to shed the teacher’s blood in the public square.”
