Wigan deputy headteacher gets lifetime ban after being jailed for child sex offences

Julie Morris, who was deputy headteacher and safeguarding lead at St George’s Central CE Primary School in Tyldesley, confessed to 18 sexual abuse offences, including two rapes, and was sent to prison for 13 years and four months in December 2021.

Liverpool Crown Court heard the 44-year-old and her partner David Morris filmed themselves abusing and raping the victim, a girl under the age of 13, in a series of videos.

Now, Morris, of Ancroft Drive, Hindley, has been banned from teaching indefinitely after a professional conduct panel meeting by the Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA).

The meeting was held in private via Microsoft Teams, after Morris asked that the allegations be considered without a hearing.

The panel was told Morris, who had been a teacher since 2005, was suspended as soon as the case was brought to the school’s attention on September 7, 2021 and was dismissed three days later.

None of the offences related to her employment. However, photographs she had taken of pupils were shared, but they were not indecent, the TRA said.

The panel found Morris had breached Teachers’ Standards and the conviction was “directly relevant to Ms Morris’ ongoing suitability to teach”.

The report said: “The panel considered that Ms Morris’ behaviour in committing these offences would undoubtedly affect public confidence in the teaching profession, particularly given the influence that teachers may have on pupils, parents and others in the community.

"Her conduct ran counter to what should be at the very core of the practice of a teacher with a duty of care towards children.

"The fact that Ms Morris was also the safeguarding lead at her school makes her offending all the more shocking in that, whilst the designated point of contact for welfare and safety concerns at the school, she herself was engaged in abusing a child, albeit not one at the school.”

The panel found her “actions were fundamentally incompatible with her being a teacher” and decision maker David Oatley said a ban was “proportionate and in the public interest”.