EXCLUSIVE Teacher was upskirted by male student only for school to make him a prefect and order her to keep him in her class - as he is now given £5k BBC-backed bursary
When teacher Sally Rees was secretly filmed up her skirt by teenage student Timothy Boomer, she expected the school to expel him before being thrown in the dock.
But incredibly Ms Rees was asked to teach the then-teenager again when his perverted sexual voyeurism was not pursued by prosecutors because he insisted it was a prank.
'They didn't expel him, they made him prefect', she told MailOnline today.
Boomer, now 24, was aged 14 and 15 when he secretly filmed up the skirts of two of his teachers without their knowledge at Enniskillen Royal Grammar School over the course of 14 months.
He would sneak up and point his camera upwards towards their knickers - but when he was finally caught he claimed it was a childish joke gone too far.
His drama teacher Ms Rees recalls wanting to vomit when she first saw the footage, lasting just under a minute, of her standing at her desk writing as he stood behind her filming up her skirt.
Incredibly, the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) in Northern Ireland initially made a decision not to prosecute the teenager, who had also done it to one of Sally's colleagues.
She is speaking because she still believes it is 'really important that people start to understand the impact' upskirting can have on victims and is continuing to campaign on the issue as boss of the NASUWT teaching union in Northern Ireland.
With the support of NASUWT union, Ms Rees and her fellow teacher took the decision to judicial review, 18 months after the voyeurism was discovered.
Boomer turned 18 during the legal proceedings so was named and shamed.
In 2019 he was convicted of committing acts of a lewd, obscene and disgusting nature and outraging public decency. He received a 20-hour restorative order.
MailOnline can reveal that six years on Boomer is back in the headlines after it was announced he was one of six young people awarded a £5,000 bursary to develop a piano album that combines jazz and traditional Irish music.
The award has been sanctioned by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland who handed him a prestigious Young Musicians' Platform Award, which is held in collaboration with the BBC.
He is featured in a video publicising the gong and shown smiling in promo material.
Sally Rees has declined to comment on his award, but has spoken about the case saying that what happened to her and a colleague will shock many people.
The bombshell TV series Adolescence and the abuse suffered by women including Gisèle Pelicot has also increased interest in her ordeal, she says.
After his conviction Boomer apologised and said it had been 'teenage bravado'.
He insisted he was 'deeply sorry for the distress, worry and pain I have brought about by my actions'.
He added: 'I want to express my regret and remorse for the hurt I have caused to my teachers. It was a wrong, horrible thing to do and at that age I stupidly and wrongly thought it was a daredevil prank, which I genuinely meant no harm by.
'I recognise how wrong I was and that my actions have had a devastating impact on my teachers and also my parents, and family. My regrets will be with me for the rest of my life.'
His lawyer said it was 'a childish prank'.
And initially he almost got away scot free when prosecutors initially dropped the case.
Boomer was suspended for a few weeks but allowed to come back and incredibly the school had expected his victim to teach him.
Sally Rees told MailOnline: 'I think it was all very much played down, including by Timothy Boomer himself in the card that he wrote to me apologising, "it was just a one off, I didn't mean any harm, I was only 14".
'Well, watching the evidence is it wasn't a one off. He was 14, and he was 15. It was a pattern of behaviour emerging, which would concern me in terms of being a gateway to more serious sexual offending in the future - generally speaking, not specifically saying that obviously about Boomer in this instance, but also the bottom line is he was still accessing that material at 16 when he was still a pupil in my class.
'The USB [containing the upskirting files] was discovered by an IT technician with the images and videos on it when he was 16 and in my 6th form Performing Arts class. The images and recordings had last been accessed six weeks prior to the discovery'.
Ms Rees, who is now president of the NASUWT union in Northern Ireland, describes herself as an accidental activist.
'The way we were treated by the judiciary process was actually traumatising and compounded our trauma', she said.
'There was a playing down of it all, on record, saying "this is not a sexual offence, there was no sexual gratification". They literally took his word for it and that was seen as the fact of the case.
'I suppose one of the things about it is that there was a lot of victim blaming around the decision to prosecute and it just exposed the fact that actually ultimately the reason it went to court was because Timothy Boomer pleaded not guilty.
'It wasn't because me and my colleague and the NASUWT decided to haul this young man through the courts.
'No, he pleaded not guilty and it the case was fought on a point of law, is school a public place or not.'
Boomer is back in the papers after he became one of six young people awarded a £5,000 bursary earlier this year.
He is a musician whose work is now backed by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and any broadcasts will be facilitated by the BBC.
In February this year, he was among six people who were presented with a Young Musicians' Platform Awards.
The decision has been criticised but will stand.
BBC NI has declined to comment. The Arts Council of Northern Ireland said: 'It is not appropriate for Arts Council NI to comment on information that is unrelated to an individual's funding application.'
Sally has said her ordeal has had more coverage now than it did at the time of the offences in 2016.
'I think that's to do with Adolescence, the TV programme I think has created this space where we're starting to talk about these things, and much more in depth, and across civil society in a way that we perhaps weren't before', she said.
'And I would also probably say the Pelicot case, and the fact that he was caught up skirting and that's how the extent of what he had been doing and the sexual abuse that he been committing was discovered.
'So it's quite interesting for me that it's been given that sort of profile at the moment.
I see that was an opportunity of really extend the conversations that we need to have about preventing this type of sexual offending in our schools and our workplaces and in society in general.'
She is passionate about protecting others who may one day suffer in the same way.
'I am out there this year as the president of the NASUWT. I have described myself as a bit of an accidental activist because what happened to me has then lead me to this kind of role and this platform.
'I am still employed and leader of learning of creative and expressive arts in Enniskillen Royal Grammar School because ultimately why should I leave the job that I love because of the way I was treated'.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
19 minutes ago
- The Independent
HMRC failure to notify MPs sooner about £47m phishing scam ‘unacceptable'
HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has been warned by a committee of MPs that its failure to report details of a breach affecting around 100,000 taxpayers is 'unacceptable'. The Treasury Committee said it was only alerted to the information when a notification was published on the HMRC website on the same day as a live session. On June 4, it emerged that HMRC had lost £47 million after a phishing scam breached tens of thousands of tax accounts. Senior civil servants at HMRC told the Treasury Committee that 100,000 people have been contacted, or are in the process of being contacted, after their accounts were locked down in what they said was an 'organised crime' incident which started last year. On Tuesday, the committee published a letter from the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) stipulating that it had not discussed the phishing incident with HMRC and was not aware of it prior to the hearing on June 4. The committee also published a letter sent via email from its chairwoman Dame Meg Hillier to John-Paul Marks, chief executive, HMRC. The letter said: 'I am alarmed that it was never deemed necessary to inform Parliament about an issue which affected such a vast number of taxpayers and led to the loss of £47 million of public money. 'To discover this information during a session from press reports and without adequate time for the committee to review the information in detail is unacceptable.' The letter said the committee is seeking responses from HMRC as to 'why was Parliament not notified earlier about the loss of £47 million of taxpayers' money, whether through a written ministerial statement and/or public or confidential letters to the Treasury Committee and the Public Accounts Committee?' The committee is also seeking responses over why the update was published on the day of the committee hearing on the work of HMRC and who else in Government was told about the incident and when. It also wants to receive a timeline of how the incident unfolded and find out what measures HMRC has put in place to ensure that such incidents do not happen in future. The letter asked for a reply by June 24 2025. Meanwhile, the letter from Glenn Collins, head of technical and strategic engagement, ACCA, to Dame Meg, dated June 5, said: 'While we regularly engage with HMRC, including earlier in the year about issues relating to agent account access, we have not received any communication from HMRC on the issue of taxpayer account breaches until yesterday. 'We have highlighted to HMRC our frustration that HMRC has not been transparent or timely in its communication over this important issue.'
Telegraph
28 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Police Federation pays £15m to officers hit by cyber attack
The Police Federation has paid out £15 million to 19,000 current and former officers who had their personal details compromised and stolen by cyber criminals. Two huge attacks exposed the home addresses of some officers to hackers six years ago, and in March 2022 the federation admitted liability for unlawfully processing officers' personal details by not having proper protection in place. The attacks sparked panic among rank and file officers who feared their safety had been compromised. The federation has admitted that two recently settled group actions 'have had an enormous impact on the finances and assets of the PFEW (Police Federation of England and Wales) and the organisation could not withstand a further claim of this nature'. Hackers accessed Police Federation systems and encrypted several of its databases during the attacks, making them inaccessible. Now the organisation, which represents 145,000 rank and file officers, has agreed to settle the claim for £15 million, inclusive of legal and insurance costs. It had been claimed that the names, email addresses, National Insurance numbers and ranks of around 120,000 police officers had been exposed. A source said: 'This is a huge settlement. It caused huge concern among rank and file police officers up and down the country.' 'Agreed a settlement' The settlement had been revealed by Monckton Chambers, the law firm. Mukund Krishna, the chief executive officer of the Police Federation, said it was his priority to resolve the two historic action claims that 'hung over the organisation' when he became CEO in July 2023. He added: 'At the end of last year, we agreed a settlement following the employment tribunal ruling against us regarding pension discrimination. 'I am now pleased to say that we have settled the data protection claims brought against PFEW by just under 20,000 members and former members. This claim followed two separate cyber attacks suffered by the federation over six years ago. 'The federation has taken the pragmatic view that settlement of the litigation is in the best interests of both the federation and its members. 'The negotiation of these settlements has required a huge amount of detailed work but will, collectively, provide the federation with much greater financial certainty going forward. This outcome will also allow PFEW to move on and focus all our efforts on transforming the organisation and serving the membership.' A total of £15 million will be paid in stages, which covers all 19,159 claims for damages but also includes legal costs, expenses and the costs of insurance cover.
The Independent
33 minutes ago
- The Independent
Nephews locked in court battle over dementia-stricken aunt's £400k estate
Two nephews are locked in a £400,000 fight over the fortune of a widow, who disinherited one side of her family after they suggested she go into a care home. Doreen Stock, who did not have any children, died in 2021 aged 86. She left her entire estate to her nephew, Simon Stock, and his wife Catherine, who lived close to her south London home. Mr Stock claimed he had been like a son to Doreen – but the will is now under challenge in court after Doreen's great-nephew, 39-year-old Ben Chiswick, launched a bid to inherit it himself. Ben, a propulsion engineer who is based in Michigan, US, had been due to inherit her fortune under a previous will written in 1986 when he was a baby, but was dramatically disinherited by his great-aunt a year before her death after his parents suggested Doreen spend time in a care home. He is fighting to reinstate the previous will, claiming Doreen, who he says was a 'fixture in his childhood', was too stricken by dementia to properly understand what she was doing when she changed her wishes. However, the Stocks are fighting the case, claiming Ben – who has lived in the US since 2017 – had no "meaningful relationship" with Doreen beyond his early years. Simon, meanwhile, had been 'the nearest thing to a son she had', they said. Sitting at Central London County Court, Judge Jane Evans-Gordon heard that "independent" and occasionally "stubborn" Doreen had a deep emotional attachment to her home in Charminster Road, Mottingham, having shared it with her husband Samuel until his death in 2001. Doreen's first will, made in 1986, ultimately left her estate to Ben, the son of her niece Patricia Chiswick and husband Brent. The estate principally contains the Mottingham house, which is valued online at about £400,000. The court heard Doreen had had a good relationship with the Chiswicks, who helped her with her shopping and visited her regularly. She even made a lasting power of attorney in their favour, but before she died she revoked the document and changed her will, leaving everything to a nephew on her husband's side: tax advisor Simon Stock and his wife Catherine. Challenging the will, Ben Chiswick claims that his great-aunt's dementia in her final years means there is serious doubt whether she had the necessary capacity to make the changes. He said the fact there was no discussion with his side of the family about the new will suggested "something not right" about her change of mind. "Doreen and I had a really happy relationship and she understood that leaving her estate to me would make a massive difference to my life," he said in his evidence. Barrister James McKean, for Simon and Catherine, told the court that Doreen had also been close to Simon, contributing to his school fees as a child. Although she previously had a close relationship with Ben's parents, that was ruined when they suggested she go into a care home in 2019, the court heard. To make matters worse, Patricia had then arranged for a "capacity assessment" for her aunt, which the barrister said led to Doreen fearing her independence was being threatened and ultimately changing her will. There had been "building resentment" with the way her power of attorney was being administered, which "finally boiled over in the summer of 2019 when the Chiswicks made an ill-judged – though perhaps well-intentioned – suggestion to Doreen that she spend a period in residential care'. 'Doreen was, by all accounts, jealously independent. It is little wonder that she found the proposition to be alarming and offensive," the barrister said. 'No doubt Doreen was worried about the prospect of going into a home, then was asked to undergo the capacity assessment, and put two and two together." Within weeks of the assessment, which resulted in a report stating she "lacked capacity", she had begun steps to revoke the power of attorney and make a new will in Simon and Catherine's favour, he told the judge. Quizzing Patricia Chiswick in the witness box, he added: "Doreen loved her home and it had been her and Samuel's home before his death. There was a deep emotional connection to that property. "Saying to Doreen that she should leave that property and spend some time in a care home was offensive to her, wasn't it? "From Doreen's perspective, this must have looked a real threat to her independence." But Patricia denied upsetting the pensioner, insisting that the plan was only ever for a short break in a care home while she and her husband went on holiday. "It was simply a suggestion because we don't usually go away for three weeks at a time, and I think she had been quite unwell and her health was deteriorating in general," she said. "I was concerned about leaving her and I thought it would be quite nice if she could go somewhere where she could be looked after while we were away. "It was absolutely stressed that it was for three weeks. There was no suggestion she was going to stay there indefinitely." The Chiswicks did not visit Doreen again between the capacity assessment in 2019 and her death in May 2021. For Patricia's son Ben, who is the claimant in the case, barrister Simon Lane said that, at the time she made the new will, she was 'vulnerable and was behaving out of character'. The 2019 assessment conducted after the suggestion of a care home move had resulted in an expert's finding that she "lacked capacity", he said. But Mr McKean said the assessment was deficient, with Doreen answering with "prickly hostility" when she was quizzed about things that made no sense to her, such as a fire which never actually happened. Other assessments around the same time had resulted in findings that she did have capacity, although she was suffering with "mild" dementia, he said. "Doreen may have had some memory problems, but capacity and memory are different beasts," he said. "The court will struggle to find any evidence of impaired cognition or reasoning. On the contrary, Doreen's behaviour, values and reasoning were consistent and plausible at all times." He said there was reason for her to decide to change her will, the last being made more than 30 years previously, and that by then Ben – living and working on the other side of the Atlantic – would have been "far from her mind as a beneficiary". He had not seen her again or even spoken on the phone after moving to the US, while most of the evidence of their relationship came from when he was a child. On the other hand, Simon and Catherine had been able to visit her regularly, living not far from her in Eltham, south London, he said. "The court can be surprised neither by the making of the disputed will, nor by Doreen's choice of beneficiaries," he added. The judge is expected to give her ruling on the case at a later date.
