A school teacher who was accused of indecently assaulting three female students has been acquitted after students admitted to lying and revealed it was an attempt to have him fired.

The teacher, whose name and school has been withheld, was on trial for seven charges of indecent assault in 2017 against three 11-year-old girls at a school in Auckland, New Zealand.

The prosecutor told the court the defendant “stroked the students’ hair in an indecent manner, swiped his hand over the chest area of two of the victims and grabbed the breasts of another victim”, Fairfax Media reports.

But after defence lawyer Marc Corlett QC questioned one of the girls, who stood by her claim that the teacher touched her but admitted to lying about seeing the teacher assault any other student.

It took the jury less than an hour to find the teacher not guilty on all charges. Source: Getty More



A male student who initially claimed he witnessed the alleged assaults also admitted to lying, telling the court that a plan was devised to get the teacher fired after an incident where he yelled and swore at them in class.

"I joined in because my friends were there and I wanted to support them and because I didn't really want to put up with any of that other stuff," he said, according to Fairfax Media.

While the other two girls stuck to their claims, the jury at the Auckland District Court took less than one hour to acquit him of all charges.

Mr Corlett said hundreds of hours of police resources were wasted because they did not approach the accusations with “healthy scepticism”.

"It was obvious from the video interview that were conducted by the police of two of the complainants and two so-called 'eye-witnesses' that their stories were hopelessly vague, inconsistent and implausible,” he told reporters outside court.

The teacher, who had worked at the school for 27 of his 40-year career, was dismissed with a few days of the allegations made last year. He said he now has to try and put back together the piece of his life.

"It was devastating to sit in the dock while listening to one complainant admit she had lied, while another one admitted there was a plan to make up stories to get me fired,” he said following his acquittal, Fairfax reports.