Principal framed to stop cheating probe, court told
Diana Lee
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
The former headmaster of a primary school was set up by four female teachers to prevent him from disclosing their alleged involvement in cheating at the school, the defense counsel told Kwun Tong Court yesterday.
Alternatively, defense counsel Alan So said, if the court was to accept that four highly intelligent women had kept silent while being molested over a six- year period, then the four teachers must have consented to such body contact.
So Yau-hang, 53, the former headmaster of Yan Oi Tong Tin Ka Ping Primary School in Tseung Kwan O, denies 13 counts of indecently assaulting four teachers from 2000 to last year.
In his final submission yesterday, Alan So said the four teachers - identified as A, B, C and D - had made up the allegations as their wrongdoings in the territory-wide system assessment of English-language competency were about to be exposed.
He said the teachers were involved, in different degrees, in the cheating and consequently teachers A and D told the school supervisor of the alleged molestations just one day before the headmaster was to announce the result of his own probe into the cheating allegations to the school's board.
Alan So described A as the most cunning of the four and pointed to the fact that she now held a senior post in the school.
The defense counsel said it was impossible to believe that four teachers who were highly educated "and with backbones" would tolerate improper advances by a headmaster over a period of six years, thereby putting their pupils in jeopardy, just because they feared they may not get another job if they protested.
Magistrate Gary Lam Kar-yan interrupted at this stage, saying there were other mitigating circumstances at the time, including school closures and the reduction of class sizes in primary schools.
"Tin Kai Ping was a reputable school and its teachers would not find it difficult to get other jobs," So argued.
But the magistrate said: "Was it possible the teachers would have been safe as long as they remained in that school when it could have been difficult to get another job because of the school closure policy?"
Alan So said the prosecution had claimed that 15 teachers had lodged complaints but produced only four witnesses.
"Our submission is that the defendant did not do it," he said.
"However, if the court finds the headmaster may have committed such acts, we would have to say as an alternative defense the teachers had dropped hints they had consented to such body contact.
"They may not have consented at first but they must have consented to it later on to flatter the headmaster or to get a promotion."
In his submission, the prosecutor said the mother of D and the former boyfriend of C had testified of hearing about such incidents many years ago.
"The importance of their testimony was not whether the allegations were true, but the fact they had heard about the complaints several years ago," he said.
"It would have been ingenious for C to have made such an allegation years before it became useful for her to use it.
"C has since seen someone else and there was no reason for her former boyfriend to help her with fabricated evidence. "
He said the four witnesses had made such complaints shortly after beginning their work at the school and not, as the defense claims, just before they were due to be exposed.
The magistrate then adjourned the case and set November 29 for the verdict.
The former headmaster's bail was extended.
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