Teacher jailed for sex acts with student

An Auckland teacher was today jailed for eight years and nine months for committing indecent acts on a primary school student.

Nicholas Raymond Baldwin, 62, was sentenced by Justice Geoffrey Venning in the High Court at Auckland.

The trial was abandoned last month after Baldwin changed his pleas to guilty.

He admitted six charges of doing indecent acts with a person under the age of 16 and two counts of sexual violation by unlawful sexual connection.

The offences were committed between January 1, 2007, and September 4, 2008.

The names of the boy, and the school he attended and at which Baldwin taught, are suppressed.

Crown prosecutor Josh Shaw said at Baldwin's trial that colleagues at the school noticed Baldwin was getting very close to the boy, often meeting outside the classroom.

But they perhaps brushed aside its significance as Baldwin was experienced and well-regarded, though one told him he should not be alone with students.

But two women Mr Shaw described as "netball mums" became concerned in August 2008. They followed Baldwin and the boy to an Auckland rugby clubrooms, where they took photographs of the pair in close contact.

They took videos of the pair at a reserve the next day, after which police were contacted.

Police then took over surveillance and one officer noticed "three periods of prolonged kissing", after which they intervened.

The student was interviewed by police and described how the relationship began as non-sexual in 2006 before it graduated to cuddling, light kissing and then heavier kissing and sexual touching.

He said they often went to hiding places, like behind rugby clubrooms, "because we didn't want anyone else to think we were gay, because we weren't".

Mr Shaw said the interview showed "how much of a hold the accused had over the complainant, how well coaxed and groomed and manipulated he was. He didn't regard it as particularly wrong."

- NZPA