A teacher was left ‘humiliated’ and ‘violated’ after she found out that a student had been secretly taking videos up her skirt while at school – an incident that still impacts Sally Rees today
Sally Rees walked into school thinking it was another typical day teaching, but was left humiliated when she discovered a student had upskirted her on several occasions without her knowledge. The incident left the drama teacher diagnosed with PTSD, as she still battles the ‘violation’ and distress of what happened today.
“A police officer came into school and told me that a USB had been found in school with images taken up my skirt,” Sally recalled to the Mirror. “At the time, we didn’t actually have the term upskirt.”
Upskirting happens when someone takes a picture under a person’s clothing without their permission. It is a criminal offence.
During a judicial review, Sally, from Northern Ireland, was asked to view the footage and confirm her identity. “There were three videos of me, one of them lasted 47 seconds, and a couple lasted four seconds. And there were still images taken from that, of between my legs,” she said.
Footage of another woman had also been found on the USB. Sally said: “It was a feeling of betrayal and humiliation. The nature of the images and how they were taken was soul-destroying.
“You are so vulnerable and trusting. He had followed me up the stairs, so he knew exactly when to take the best images of me. In one of the videos, I’m actually talking to him as he’s following behind me, he’s waiting for me to go upstairs.
“I just felt so stupid. I was like, ‘how did I not know that he was doing this?'”
Sally added: “I think what’s really important to understand about how shattering it is as a teacher when this violation happens to you, is that this was a pupil I had taught since the age of 12. I knew his family and taught his older brother.
“My trust was absolutely shattered, and I could not believe that he would do something like this to anybody, never mind me. I felt so degraded and violated.” The teacher said the pupil “was arrested and suspended from school for 15 days”.
‘Expected me to teach him’
Sally was determined to stay at the same school to continue teaching, having paved the way in her career as head of drama and leader for learning, creative and expressive art. However, she said: “They didn’t expel him, and then they expected me to teach him.”
This was when the NASUWT Teachers’ Union (National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers) stepped in to support Sally. She stopped teaching the class with the pupil in, but said it “led people to believe” she was the one “who had done something wrong”.
“Everyone started asking why I wasn’t teaching this pupil, what had I done, but I was sworn to silence because of child protection. The rumour mill went into overdrive,” she explained.
“I just felt it was really unfair and unjust because I felt like if I took time off, then people would just go, ‘oh, well, there’s truth in this, she’s not in school, has she been suspended’, so I kept going to school and kept doing my job.
“I became a recluse in the school because the pupil was in school and in my environment. I got sent an email every day to tell me where he was, but I was terrified of coming into contact with him.
“Once, he came into my classroom and I just froze.
“It was about being in that environment with the person who sexually assaulted and abused me. My body had such a trauma response to that, and I became hyper vigilant, and I withdrew myself.”
‘Shattered my sense of trust and security’
However, Sally said the pupil was made a prefect of film around a year later. Sally claimed: “The school would not see it as a sexual offence. I think we’ve moved on now with an understanding of what upskirting is, but the reality is, it’s still being committed.”
She continued: “When the police called me a victim, it just shattered my sense of who I am as a person; I would never see myself in that view. And it just shattered all my sense of trust and security in the world.
“In that moment, he literally turned me from being a teacher to an object.
“To this day, they would never investigate whether or not those images were shared. And so I continually still live with the fact that when I meet pupils from that period, or if I meet people in a social setting who were ex-pupils from that time, I still think, ‘Have they seen those images of me?'”.
‘I was diagnosed with PTSD’
The incident took place on November 30 2016, but despite it being almost 10 years ago, she says she still lives with PTSD today.
Sally, who is now the president of the NASUWT Teachers’ Union in Northern Ireland, shared: “Sometimes it catches you unaware. As a result, I have quite a heightened startle reflex and a profound dislike of open stairs.
“I would occasionally still get flashbacks in school when I went through doors or certain areas of the school. Unexpectedly, I’ll have flashbacks because those images are burned into my mind. The pupil turned a place of joy into a place of fear.
“If people get too close to me, that has an effect. One time I was coming out of a concert and I could feel myself disassociating, having that kind of outer body experience, because a man was too close to me in that environment. I was thinking, ‘what’s he doing?’, Why has he got his phone out?'”
“Another time, more recently, someone had their phone out and the way the angle was I thought ‘Are they recording me?’ – sometimes it just kicks in.
“It’s mainly around phone use, people getting too close to me in a public space or any kind of environment, and open stairways. But it’s really unpredictable.
“I was diagnosed with PTSD afterwards.”
Sally continued: “It had an untold impact on my family. They were so amazing in how they supported me, they sort of dressed me for battle every day with their love, and they are just phenomenal. I would not have got through that without them or without the support of my trade union.”
Sally was filmed multiple times over 14 months, and after a lengthy legal process, the student was found guilty of five counts of outraging public decency in 2019.
“At the time, I felt very numb, there was no joy in that”, Sally said of the charges. “My overriding feeling was of relief, that finally what had been done to us was recognised for the crime it was, and that justice so hard fought for had been finally won. I didn’t want this to happen to anybody else again.”
Today, Sally says she has an “honest and open relationship with the principal” at the school. She explained: “I think we’ve both learned a lot through this experience, and we try to be proactive with dealing with issues.”
Sally’s focus with the NASUWT is to educate on the impact of upskirting, have robust policies in schools to prevent this type of offending, and to introduce mandatory training for school Boards of Governors regarding their Duty of Care to prevent sexual harassment in schools.