Lifetime ban for sex abuse teacher
A maths teacher whose sexual abuse of a teenage girl led to her attempted suicide has been banned from teaching.
Richard Ariss, 29, molested the 14-year-old after teaching her at Ivybridge Community College, Devon.
He began grooming the girl after her parents asked him to be her private tutor, the National College for Teaching Leadership.
He had taught the girl maths in years seven and nine, and then set up a Facebook page designed as a teaching tool for students.
The girl’s parents had then contacted him to arrange private tuition, but just before the first lesson her mother found texts from Ariss and called the police.
Ariss’s texts encouraged the student to perform sex acts on herself and showed he had asked her to call him so he could listen to her doing it.
At the trial at Exeter Crown Court, Peter Coombe, prosecuting said: ‘The aggravating features are inciting her to penetrate herself and suggesting she should perform oral sex on him.
‘There was significant planning and he has groomed her over time in gross breach of trust.’
Giving evidence, his victim had told the court she had lost all confidence in teachers.
She said: ‘I have struggled to sleep, I have self-harmed and taken an overdose.
‘My grades have suffered and I cannot do the subject he taught because it reminds me of it all.
‘I am scared of teachers who are nice to me because it reminds me of how it all started. My trust in teachers has vanished.
‘I feel utterly unsafe because of the fear he will come after me for speaking up.’
Shortly after the allegations emerged the victim overdosed on paracetamol and her mother found farewell letters to her friends.
On being arrested, Ariss claimed he had lost his phone despite texting the girl just hours earlier.
On February 12 of this year he admitted one count inciting a child under 16 to engage in sexual activity, and two of causing or inciting a girl aged between 13 to 15 to engage in sexual activity, where the offender is over the age of 18.
Ariss was jailed for 12 months and handed a sexual harm prevention order.
Banning him from teaching, NCTL panel chairman Tony Heath said: ‘The judge at Mr Ariss’ trial concluded that, had the relationship between Mr Ariss and Pupil A continued, there would have been sexual contact.
‘Mr Ariss had a blatant disregard for safeguarding policies that would have been in place at the schools in which he taught.
‘The actions of Mr Ariss clearly had a very significant impact on Pupil A (who was already vulnerable), in that she tried to take her own life shortly after these matters came to a conclusion.’
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