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Teacher who beat Worksop pupil with dumbbell banned from working with vulnerable adults and children
Peter Harvey
A teacher who attacked a 14-year-old Worksop pupil with a dumbbell has been banned from working with vulnerable adults by three of the country’s top judges.
Peter Harvey, who taught at the All Saints Roman Catholic School, in Mansfield, was in the grip of severe depression when he snapped and assaulted the allegedly disruptive schoolboy.
He dragged the boy out of class and into another room where he beat him around the head with a dumbbell, shouting “die, die”. The youngster suffered life-threatening injuries.
Harvey, 52, was acquitted of attempted murder and causing grievous bodily harm with intent at Nottingham Crown Court in 2010.
However, he admitted the less serious charge of causing grievous bodily harm and was handed a community sentence.
The teacher, who was encountering family difficulties at the time and had an unblemished 20-year classroom career behind him, was later banned by the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) from working with vulnerable adults or children.
However, after he appealed to the Upper Tribunal, Harvey’s hopes of forging a career as a charity worker were boosted when he was allowed to work again with vulnerable adults.
The tribunal was swayed by the views of a medical expert who said: “It is difficult to see how he could pose a risk to adults, certainly in the kind of charitable work he is interested in”.
Harvey’s victory was today turned to ashes at the Court of Appeal, where top judges ruled that the ISA had been entitled to conclude that he posed too high a risk of causing harm to vulnerable adults to be allowed to work with them.
The ISA, recently re-named as the Disclosure and Barring Service, had carried out a careful balancing exercise and the tribunal had been wrong to criticise its decision.
The court restored Harvey’s name to the list of those barred from working with vulnerable adults.
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Weather for Gainsborough
Sunday 19 May 2013
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