Devonport High School for Girls has been branded as a potentially unsafe place for men to work after a teacher was unfairly sacked when girl students made dubious allegations he sexually assaulted them. Maths and computing teacher Jonathan Hawker lost his job and was arrested by police who raided his home and seized his laptop, phone and other electronic equipment after girls said he had inappropriately touched them in class.
But police and crown prosecutors dropped the charges saying there was no chance of a conviction. Mr Hawker, who denied all the “career-ending” allegations and had an unblemished disciplinary record before they were made, was still sacked for gross misconduct.
He took the grammar school to an employment tribunal which found the investigation was flawed and unfair to him and based on doubtful evidence. It did not give sufficient weight to the statements of two girl students who said the teacher’s accusers had told them they “tried to get Mr Hawker fired for fun” by saying he had touched their thighs and sexually assaulted them.
Employment Judge Street awarded Mr Hawker £44,868 after the tribunal found he had been unfairly dismissed. The tribunal, not being a court, is not in a position to say whether the alleged misconduct took place, it can only look at whether the school carried out a fair and reasonable investigation.
But in the conclusion of a 79-page report of the hearing, the judge said the investigation was neither fair nor reasonable, and said: “I make no finding on whether Mr Hawker committed the misconduct alleged. What I can say is that if he is innocent, and a playground plot can end a career and destroy a reputation, the school is not providing a safe working environment for its staff, in particular for its male staff.”
The tribunal heard that Mr Hawker worked at Devonport High School for Girls from March 2017 to February 19, 2022, but was suspended on June 28, 2021, following allegations of inappropriate conduct from students, who cannot be named for legal reasons. He was arrested and charged on September 1, 2021 after four police officers in three vehicles swooped on his home.
The Teachers Regulation Agency imposed an Interim Prohibition Order on October 28, 2021, and the following month the school commissioned an internal investigation, carried out by assistant head teacher Harriet Morgan, who was untrained and had never carried out an inquiry before.
Head teacher Lee Sargeant authorised a disciplinary process in January 2022. A panel of three governors dismissed Mr Hawker for gross misconduct on February 19, 2022.
On March 3 police decided charges against him would not proceed and on April 1, the temporary ban was lifted. Mr Hawker’s appeal hearing on May 17 and 23 upheld the gross misconduct dismissal. The following month Mr Hawker brought his claim for unfair dismissal.
The tribunal heard the investigation started when a student, only named as Student N, gave a note to her tutor, saying another student, Student H, had said Mr Hawker had touched her leg. The note was not produced at the tribunal.
Assistant head teacher Ruth Morgan spoke to the two girls and five others but didn’t take statements. She then took statements from four other girls, but let them write them and didn’t ask questions, and didn’t pursue evidence from other students despite 23 being named during the investigation.
Five girls – Students D, E, F, G and H – made allegations they had been touched, stroked or massaged on the shoulders, arms or thigh. For example, Student E said: “In computing, Mr Hawker has stroked/massaged my shoulder, I have also witnessed him massaging other girls arms, I have seen him looking inappropriately at girls. Also I have heard from Student G that he has winked at her and stroked/touched her leg or thigh.”
The tribunal head Mr Hawker was suspended but given no explanation of the allegations, then suffered the “brutal experience” of being arrested at home and put in a cell. The police investigation was based on only the statements of two girls, Students F and G, and it wasn’t until January 2022 that he learned of the evidence of two other students, Students L and M, referred to as “the older girls”.
They reported, in July 2021, that they had spoken to a group of younger girls who said they had tried to get Mr Hawker sacked. Student L had written a statement saying: “In the netball courts at lunch a group of (x years) told us that they tried to get Mr Hawker fired for fun and they told people that he was touching their thighs and sexually assaulting them. I don’t know any of their names or forms but I think the main one who said they tried to get him fired for being a paedophile for fun is called Student H.”
Student M wrote: “When I was leaving the bottom court with Student L we were talking to some year xs who then said ‘I think we got Mr Hawker fired’ to which I replied ‘What? Why would you do that’ and then one of them said ‘Because it was fun’ and another one added ‘Yeh we said he touched our thighs trying to get him done for sexual assault’ (or something along those lines it was hard to hear properly). I think one of them is called Student H.”
The tribunal report said the ‘older girls’ were talking about girls fabricating a plot to get Mr Hawker dismissed. It was also revealed that Student D had later changed her story, and the two students who made allegations that Mr Hawker touched their thighs, F and G, had been disciplined and separated during the lesson when they described it happening.
Student H was also considered to be unreliable, including by her father, and was taken out of the investigation. But this was not disclosed to the panels, potentially misleading them.
The judge also said: “If there was that much inappropriate activity by Mr Hawker, it seems reasonable to think that other girls in the class might have been aware of it. If they were not, that might raise a question as to the accuracy of the evidence.”
The judge said that, from the outset, the investigation had a very narrow focus and “it is not clear why”. The judge concluded that the school’s dismissal of the older girls’ evidence as unrelated to the allegations was “not rational or reasonable” and it had even misrepresented their evidence, misleading the disciplinary and appeal panels as to its possible relevance.
Furthermore, a failure to start a fuller investigation was unfair, and it was unreasonable to narrow the investigation to the unquestioned statements of the four younger girls who made allegations. Failure to explore evidence potentially supportive of Mr Hawker was also unfair.
The approach to the evidence of the younger girls was unquestioning and “inappropriate where credibility is a key determinant of the outcome in a disciplinary process”. The judge said the investigating officer, Harriet Morgan, was untrained in carrying out investigations and ill-equipped to understand her role, including as to the duty to carry out a full and fair investigation and to report the facts.
Employment Judge Street said: “No reasonable employer would conclude that the younger girls were giving truthful evidence in good faith without question; that is, without exploring the contrary evidence including the contemporary evidence from the older girls of a plot against Mr Hawker based on closely similar allegations, the unreliability of Student H, that Student D withdrew serious allegations; that there was then a conflict between what Student D said and what Student E said she saw; that there was a context in which false rumours were being reported amongst the pupils about Mr Hawker, that several pupils who might have been expected to see something had no concerns to report.”
The judge concluded there was a lack of investigation and evaluation, compounded by misrepresentation and concealment. The judge said: “In a career-ending case, the investigation has to be as full as possible. This fell well short of that. The school accepted the evidence of the younger pupils without challenge or exploration and discounted, ignored or avoided finding contrary evidence.
“The disciplinary panel and the appeal panel decided they had to make a decision on what they had before them. What they had before them was wholly inadequate to the decision they had to reach, through failure of investigation and the failure to present the evidence properly.”