'No man in his right mind should become a teacher', says deputy head falsely accused of raping pupil

A teacher found not guilty of raping a 14-year-old pupil has said that no man “in his right mind” should become a teacher.

Kato Harris, 38, was accused of raping and sodomising a pupil at the private girls’ school he taught at during the autumn term of 2013.

The girl alleged the attacks happened when Mr Harris invited her to join him in a classroom during lunch break.

Mr Harris, who was head of department at the London school, was cleared last year of three counts of raping a girl under the age of 16, following just 26 minutes of deliberation by the jury.

Speaking to TalkRadio today in his first broadcast interview since clearing his name, Mr Harris said that he had been left questioning why any man would possibly want to consider a career in teaching.

Mr Harris told TalkRadio: “After the ordeal I’ve been through, would I go back and make the same decision to be a teacher again? The answer is no, and the public would understand that.

“I’ve tried to explain why my case delivers a very strong message to men who are thinking about being teachers, about why that is not something they should do.

“There is a narrative now in safeguarding in schools as much as anywhere else that every male employee is viewed through the lens of being a potential pervert. Every male teacher is a potential child abuser.”

He said that male teachers are “buying a lottery ticket”, adding: “You might win a £10 prize and have a false allegation made that you called a child a rude name, or swore at a child. You might win the £1,000 prize and have a pupil suggest you inappropriately touched them while passing in corridor.

“Or you might win the jackpot and be accused of, on three separate occasions and in full view of the school, anally raping a pupil. Whatever the prize, who would want that ticket? But you can’t be a teacher without one and you have a one in five chance of winning.”

“You’ve got a one-in-five chance of ‘winning a prize’ that we know – I wouldn’t want to buy that ticket and I don’t see why any man in his right mind would want to either.”

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Mr Harris said he felt no bitterness towards his accuser, instead saying he felt “genuinely sorry for her”.

He had left the school before the allegations were made against him in December 2014, and doesn’t believe the girl – who he had never taught – had a grudge against him.

In an interview last month with the Mail on Sunday, Mr Harris said he was “unemployed, living in a bedsit and will soon be on housing benefit. I am toxic.”

He admitted to TalkRadio: “I do have residual feelings of misery about everything that I lost, but that is counter-balanced by everything that I have gained — freedom and the ability to make decisions about my future.”

He added: “What we really can’t do is create a situation where we believe allegations less, take suggestions of sexual abuse less seriously, or investigate them less carefully.”

The only solution open to male teachers is to “only to teach boys, or not to teach at all”, he said.

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