Girls suspended over sexually suggestive texts to male teacher

TWO girls aged 10 and 11 were suspended from a Dublin primary school after sending sexually suggestive text messages to a male teacher.

The incident happened last September but the name of the school is unknown.

The case was highlighted by the Irish Primary Principals Network (IPPN), which has become aware of growing cases of text message bullying of pupils by their peers.

Although the ability to block their numbers when sending messages gives these children a degree of anonymity, this particular case was solved when one of the girls involved apparently owned up to her parents.

The messages were sent by a group of up to eight fifth and sixth class pupils during sleepovers in their homes, after they got access to the teacher’s number.

IPPN director Sean Cottrell said text messaging as a form of bullying is a growing cause of concern.

“There is a lot of intimidation and harassment taking place from the so-called security of anonymous text messages,” he said.

“Traditionally, bullying was done physically or verbally, something which involved face-to-face actions. But kids have become a lot braver since they think they can’t be caught using their mobile phones, which most children have from around the age of 10 or even younger now.”

The IPPN director said that in most cases, it is not possible to trace these messages from blocked numbers, except where parents authorise gardaí to monitor calls or messages to their child’s mobile.

“A worrying aspect of this form of bullying is that children who would not normally get involved have been dared into taking part in sending nasty messages to pupils and, in some cases, teachers,” he said.

“The fact it is technology-based means they will engage in riskier behaviour because it’s something that’s not as easily detected.”

Meanwhile, a website being used by students of Irish second-level schools to publish sexually explicit comments about others and to slag students from other schools has been categorised as ‘controversial’ by an internet security system used in most Irish schools.

Use of the hateboard.com site at school led to the suspension of a number of girls from a Dublin school before Christmas.

But the site’s categorisation by the FortiGuard web filtering system, offered to schools by the National Council for Technology in Education, places it in the same group of categories as nudity and risque, gambling, extremist groups and alcohol and tobacco sites, which are blocked from most school computers.