Latham Martin, former candidate for Mayor of Westland.
Warning: This story contains graphic language
A mayoral candidate with links to a high school sent inappropriate pictures to several students and asked one them if they would hypothetically perform oral sex if asked to.
Latham Martin, who was the chair of Westland High School’s Board of Trustees and a district councillor, has also been accused of acting inappropriately towards six students, including buying them gifts, messaging them repeatedly and attempting to touch them.
On one occasion Martin asked a year 11 student “how would you feel if I asked you to suck c**k?” to whom he was giving a ride in his car.
“He sometimes sent me photos of his girlfriend wearing just a bra and short shorts,” another of those students said, while another said he’d received a photo from Martin where “…he wasn’t wearing anything and you could basically see his balls.”
Martin has in turn accused the six male students of a “witch hunt” organised by a teacher at Westland High School in an effort to discredit him.
However, today the Teachers Disciplinary Tribunal issued its ruling siding with the teenagers’ version of events.
Martin denied all of the allegations against him at a hearing held into his conduct in Christchurch last year. He was employed at the school in a non-teaching role but held a teaching registration at the time the incidents occurred.
According to the summary of facts outlined in the nearly 80-page ruling released by the tribunal, Martin, who also held various roles at the Westland District Council and had run for its mayoralty last year, was found guilty of engaging in inappropriate behaviour with multiple students.
The first complainant, a Year 11 student at the school said following a school athletics day Martin gave him a ride home in his car.
“As I got in Latham’s truck I said my legs were sore. Latham said ‘oh, yeah, I know how to fix cramps,’ and reached with his left hand back and started rubbing my leg around my thigh,” the student told the tribunal.
“At one point after he rubbed my leg [the same day] my friend got in the car. Latham told him: ‘you make me so excited whenever I see you’. "
Another time he gave the teen a ride home - and in saying goodbye said “I love you.” The student said he didn’t know how to respond.
In 2021 he drove the teen and another student to McDonald’s.
“Everything was fine on the way there, but on the way back Latham started being weird,” the student recalls.
He then asked the student hypothetically how he felt about oral sex and when confronted said he was just joking, before reaching back to grab some of the student’s fries and hovered his hand over the teenager’s crotch area.
“I was really weirded out by what had happened and was pretty quiet on the rest of the drive,” the teen said in evidence.
The same student said Martin would send him photos of his girlfriend in a bikini or in her underwear. He also asked him if he could come to his house.
Latham then tried to apologise to the student sometime in 2021 and tried to give him $50, which he refused to accept.
Another student in the same year also complained that Martin would send him explicit photos of his girlfriend on Snapchat as well as a photo taken inside of a casino of Martin where he could almost see his genitals.
“Another time he messaged me at 11pm and asked to hang out,” the student said.
Three other students said Martin would contact them on Snapchat mainly to help with the community work he was doing around Hokitika.
One of the students said he would often go for a drive with Latham and they’d “hang out” but nothing inappropriate occurred.
A year 13 student at the school said that following an accident where Martin ended up in hospital the 28-year-old would send him photos of the scar on his chest.
“They would be pictures of his chest with no top on, and Latham would say things like “Oh it’s healing good”. I could see the scar in the pictures,” the student said.
A teacher at the school who gave evidence said a student showed him messages from Martin asking the student to hang out. He reported this to then principal Iain Murray who commenced an investigation and interviewed the students involved before reporting Martin to the police.
Police investigated the allegations against Martin before referring the complaint to the Teachers Disciplinary Tribunal which conducted its own investigation before levelling charges of inappropriate conduct against him.
In evidence to the tribunal in June last year Martin denied all of the allegations against him.
“I deny all allegations of a sexual or intimate nature with the boys,” his brief of evidence reads.
“I did not make the statement ‘How would you like it if I asked you to suck dick?’ I did not reach around the back of the truck to grab fries and put my hand near his crotch. I could not have done this.”
Martin nearly died in 2021 after a freak accident with a weed eater saw him need 31 blood transfusions and much of his evidence before the tribunal centred on how he couldn’t have touched one of the boys during a trip to McDonald’s because he was unable to twist around in his car seat.
He also accused one of the student complainants of being a “ringleader” to the other complainants and that their allegations were a “witch hunt”.
" …these allegations, are kind of just all snowballed and built, and were encouraged and grew by [the student] to the point where, you know, he was the continuous theme throughout.”
However, the tribunal didn’t buy that explanation and in its ruling today said the various witnesses were believable and consistent throughout their evidence.
“Ultimately Mr Martin’s position, as stated in cross-examination, was that all the boys were lying, save it appears for and that Mr Martin was the only one telling the truth,” its ruling reads.
The tribunal said the allegations against Martin demonstrated “…an unusual tendency on Mr Martin’s part, whilst aged in his mid to late 20′s, to have an over-interest in contact with teenage school boys.”
“This tendency extends to excessive and at times unwanted attempts at communication and contact, often with sexual innuendo, or more directly at times.
“The behaviour reflects adversely on Mr Martin’s fitness as a teacher. That is particularly so given the several instances of physical touching, the lewd comments, the image sharing, gift buying, persistent contact, apologies, and allowing unlicensed school boys to drive his car on public roads.”
Ultimately the tribunal opted to cancel Martin’s teaching registration and order him to pay $34,000 in legal costs.
Martin did not respond to a request for comment. He is no longer working for the school and is no longer employed employed by the council after he wasn’t re-elected this term.
Jeremy Wilkinson is an Open Justice reporter based in Manawatū covering courts and justice issues with an interest in tribunals. He has been a journalist for nearly a decade and has worked for NZME since 2022.
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