Community order for pupil attack teacher
A British teacher who snapped and attacked a pupil who had been goading him was spared a prison sentence today when he was handed a two-year community order.
Peter Harvey, 50, attacked the 14-year-old schoolboy at All Saints’ Roman Catholic School in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, on July 8 last year after repeatedly being taunted by pupils in his science class.
Last month, a jury at Nottingham Crown Court took just an hour to clear Harvey of attempting to murder the boy or intending to cause him serious injury.
The married father of two, who earlier admitted causing grievous bodily harm without intent, bludgeoned the boy with a 6.6lb (3kg) dumbbell while shouting “Die, die, die”.
But the jury accepted his barrister’s claims that his pupils had driven him over the edge and he did not know what he was doing when the youngster, now 15 and a known trouble-maker, told him to “F*** off”.
It emerged during the four-day trial that pupils at the school were trying to wind up Harvey so his reaction could be caught on a camcorder being used secretly by a girl in the class.
The footage was then to be passed around the school as a way of “humiliating” Harvey.
