A teacher who claimed she had been wrongfully dismissed for having an alleged sexual relationship with one of her students has dropped her claim and agreed to pay the Department of Education’s costs.
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Anna Blackburn, 34, was sacked in October 2007 after the department investigated the student’s claims that the pair had been sexually involved for eight months while he was in his final year in 2003 at Bathurst’s Carenne Public School.
But she denied the affair had ever taken place and said the department had failed to consider the mildly intellectually disabled student’s psychological history before accepting his version of events.
She instituted legal proceedings against the department in the NSW Industrial Relations Commission, which sat through five days of evidence last month before adjourning the hearing until today.
But the hearing did not resume as planned. The parties reached a settlement yesterday morning that involved Ms Blackburn agreeing to discontinue the proceedings and to pay the department’s costs.
The student, David Withyman, is suing the department and the teacher for breaching their duty of care in separate proceedings in the District Court.
In those proceedings, he has said the teacher entered into a sexual relationship with him in 2003 that the school failed to prevent, and its termination drove him to commit crimes including assault, possessing an unauthorised firearm and being armed with intent to commit an offence.
Ms Blackburn and the department are defending the claims.
A point of contention at the Industrial Relations Commission was Ms Blackburn’s decision to continue speaking on the telephone to Mr Withyman after a behavioural contract had been drawn up to prevent inappropriate contact between the pair.
Telephone records indicated they spoke for periods lasting up to 40 minutes, sometimes every night of the week, and a shopkeeper across the road from Ms Blackburn’s home told police he had frequently seen a teenager matching Mr Withyman’s description leaving Ms Blackburn’s home in the early morning.
After the alleged relationship broke up in 2003, the commission heard, Mr Withyman gave authorities a graphic description of encounters with Ms Blackburn, including that they had played strip poker and used cream in their sexual activities.
