A “perverted” drama teacher who was jailed for 12 months after he spanked and whipped aspiring actresses at fake auditions has been banned from teaching for 12 years.
The ban from England’s General Teaching Council follows Stephen Hunt’s release from prison. His conviction resulted in an automatic appearance before the GTC on charges of unprofessional conduct.
Tony Cuthbert, chair of the GTC committee which considered the case last week, said: “His behaviour brought disrepute to his school and the profession. The gravity of the allegations found proven brings into doubt his ability to hold a position as a teacher.”
Hunt pleaded guilty to six counts of indecent assault at the city’s crown court in March 2002 after a police raid on his house in Selly Oak, Birmingham.
They found piles of videos showing the 46-year-old forcing women to simulate sexual acts on him.
The GTC heard that he would play the male lead in scenes for the erotic plays he had written, making women act out sexually explicit roles in kinky costumes, semi-naked or naked.
The married man was sacked from his position as special needs teacher for autistic children at Baskerville school in Harborne, Birmingham, in March 2002.
Police were alerted to his activities in December 1999 after a woman who attended an audition after seeing an advert in The Stage magazine complained that she had been humiliated and defiled.
Judge Derek Stanley, passing sentence at Birmingham crown court in March 2002, said Hunt tricked women into compromising positions to “satisfy a deep-seated and perverted lust”.
“You wrote plays and then enticed these young women into submitting themselves for auditions,” he told him.
Detective constable Andrew Bentley from West Midlands police, who was present at the GTC hearing, said videos from Hunt’s house showed many plays Hunt had written involved sexual violence towards women.
Mr Bentley told the GTC committee, sitting in Birmingham last week, that police found CVs from young girls wanting to be actresses along with videos in Hunt’s loft.
They also discovered anti-Muslim songs and leaflets which condemned asylum-seekers, immigrants and refugees.
Hunt, who was appointed at Baskerville in 1996, was immediately suspended from the school and dismissed in March 2002 when he was convicted.
The committee heard that he had used the school’s name to book studios for the auditions. He was not present nor represented at the GTC hearing.
Gordon Thornett, Baskerville’s former headteacher, said that before his arrest Hunt had been an “eccentric” but very able teacher.
Charges that Hunt had been in possession of racially abusive material and that he turned up at Baskerville when he had been suspended were also found proven.
