If a school’s head of safeguarding is married to a convicted paedophile, do parents have the right to know?

[Jim Burton]

https://www.sheffieldtribune.co.uk/a-se ... -be-named/

was approached by a male wanting to talk to me regarding sexual grooming at a school”, began the report from an unnamed Police Community Support Officer. The man in question had cornered the PCSO outside an Asda on 8th December 2023 and reportedly began “by saying he was not crazy,” although the officer appears to have taken this with a grain of salt. “The male appeared to have mental health issues,” the report concludes.

This man told the PCSO that he worked at a school in South Yorkshire, one he was in the process of suing. “Because of this, he said he was not really supposed to talk about it,” the officer recalls, although he seemed compelled to unburden himself anyway. The head of safeguarding at his school, this man told the officer, was married to and lived with a convicted paedophile. Not only that, but her husband’s crimes were committed while he was a primary school teacher, exploiting his position to abuse multiple girls. He was therefore on the sex offender’s register for life.

Unbeknownst to the sceptical officer, this last fact was entirely true. The man — who this article will refer to as Edward — was hired at a council-run school in early 2019 and learned about his colleague’s circumstances during a conversation with another member of staff later that year. He found it profoundly disturbing. His colleague, who this article will call Alice, had a role which meant she was responsible for protecting extremely vulnerable students. At the same time, she was in an intimate relationship with someone who could never be trusted to work with children again.