A MALE teacher was detained by police for alleged sexual assault and will be dismissed from Longxiang School in Pingshan New Area, his employer said.

    The teacher is accused of molesting up to 14 girls, with the girls reportedly being talked out of reporting the incident by another teacher, the Shenzhen Economic Daily reported yesterday.

    The school principle, directors of the school and several other teachers at the management level were suspended from their posts for failing to prevent the assaults and not reporting the incidents promptly to the higher education department, the new area’s education authority said.

    Four female students who were molested over a period of about two months, called the police over the weekend. They accused the 27-year-old teacher, identified only as Wu, of inappropriately touching them in a classroom and in Wu’s office.

    According to one of the victims, identified only as Ruru, Wu started teaching them in September. In one class in October, Wu allegedly walked past Ruru and put his hand first on her shoulder, Ruru said. “He then touched my breast. I didn’t pay much attention to it the first time. My classmate sitting next to me didn’t even see it,” she said.

    According to Ruru, about 14 students in her class have been molested by Wu.

    “He sometimes touched our breasts, sometimes touched our private parts,” she said, adding that Wu would ask them to go see him in his office under the pretense of correcting their homework or individual tutoring.

    Another girl student, identified as 13-year-old Meimei, said she has been harassed by Wu twice in his office.

    Police detained Wu in the staff dormitory Saturday night. Wu denied that he had molested female students when being interrogated and said he only placed his hands on the students’ shoulders.

    According to the students’ testimony and evidence collected by the police, Wu had sexually molested several female students, police said.

    Ruru said she didn’t report it to other teachers because she was afraid that Wu would punish her if she did so. Some other victims said the same thing.

    Many female students considered reporting the harassment to the school principal, but other teacher talked the girls out of it.

    Ruru’s father said his daughter had never told him about the assaults and found out what happened only when other parents came to tell him. The father said some other parents of the female students who were assaulted might still know little about the harassment.

    The school principle, identified only as Tang, said he was informed about the incident Friday night in phone calls from parents. Tang said the incident “took place suddenly” and he did not know about it before. He also said that they would expel Wu from the school.

    Tang said Wu had been teaching at the school for almost three years after passing all tests and interviews. Tang said the police would investigate the charges of sexual assaults.

    A teacher from the school told the Daily that she had heard rumors about Wu’s sexual assaults but did not know Wu had been detained by police already. She also said that the school had received complaints from parents that Wu “touched female students” last semester.

    The new area’s government said it will set up a special team at the school to provide psychological counseling for students and parents. (Zhang Qian)