Deputy head Kato Harris falsely accused of raping pupil claims men working at school are ‘playing the lottery’ in trying to avoid sex claims
Former deputy head Kato Harris, 38, warned other men against a teaching career after his two-year hell
A SCHOOL deputy head wrongly accused of raping a teenager in his classroom has warned other male teachers they face a "lottery" of false allegations.
Kato Harris, who was cleared of sickening crimes last year, said all male staff are viewed as "a potential child abuser" and the risk of a bogus allegation means any man considering the career should think again.
Mr Harris, 38, endured two years of hell after a troubled youngster said he attacked her three times at the private school where he used to be a geography teacher.
Despite being exonerated he is now jobless, living in a bedsit and suffers post-traumatic stress disorder with flashbacks and anxiety attacks.
In his first broadcast interview, he told TalkRadio will never go back in the classroom despite being cleared by authorities.
He said: "My case delivers a very strong message to men who are thinking about being teachers.
"There is a narrative now in safeguarding in schools as much as anywhere else that every male employee is viewed through the lens of being a potential pervert. Every male teacher is a potential child abuser.
"We know that 22 per cent of male teachers have false allegations made about them at some point in their career.
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"What happened to me as a male teacher accused of the worst of all crimes of child abuse, it was like winning a lottery you don't want to win.
"If you become a male teacher you are buying that lottery ticket. You might win the £10 lottery prize - there might be a false allegation that you called a child a rude name.
"You might win the £1,000 prize where a pupil suggests you had inappropriately touched them passing in the corridor.
"And you might win the £1million jackpot - that you took a pupil into a classroom on three separate occasions in the full view of the entire school and raped them.
"Whatever the prize in this awful lottery, I can't see why anyone would want to have a ticket."
It took a jury just 15 minutes to clear Mr Harris, who had a newborn daughter, at his trial last year.
But first he had to "sweat" over a weekend before the jury started deliberations, and he said he used it "to do my prison shopping" as he could not help being terrified he would be jailed for life.
He told TalkRadio presenter Julia Hartley-Brewer: "The only way I can compare it is with, not only writing your will but sending out the invitations to your funeral and carving your name into your own tombstone, digging the grave and setting out the embalming fluid next to your body.
"As a prison custody officer had told me, you're never going to see your daughter again."
When the verdicts came back not guilty, he said: "Nearly two years of stress and tension and adrenaline just poured from me and my legs just turned to jelly.
"I lost control of my legs and fell down, burst into hysterical tears - and I sort of came to, breathing very fast. I think the judge had said I could sit down.
"And just a feeling of pins and needles, that sense of, well almost like you've escaped death.
"Not long after that the feeling of euphoria and joy and above all a kind of sense of feeling at one with the world, of great love for the world and everyone in it.
"For something I'd felt really bitter about - that the world was a bad place where these things could be allowed to happen - and this tremendous sense of how beautiful the world was and what a sunny day it was.
"And leaving the courtroom and finding two or three members of the jury had actually stayed behind outside the courtroom afterwards to give me their good wishes. It was one of the greatest days of my life."
He added he did not feel angry at his accuser, saying: "I felt genuinely sorry for her and the train that she had started in motion and had now run away beyond her control."
The court heard the teen had a contest with a pal to see who could have "the biggest story" before she told staff she had been raped.
After hours of questioning by cops she finally said it was a geography teacher - and Mr Harris was put in the frame because he was the only male teacher of that subject.
He was arrested after giving a Christmas assembly at St George's School in Ascot, where he had moved in the year since the alleged rapes.
Detectives felt the case was flimsy - but the girl's wealthy parents hired senior former members of the Metropolitan Police and Crown Prosecution Service who put "enormous" pressure on investigators to bring the case to court, a judge said in a damning ruling.
Mr Harris, 38, who was described in court as a “brilliant and inspirational educator”, is now considering a job at a crematorium “putting bodies in the fire” to make ends meet.
He told a newspaper last month: “If you have enough money, there are former senior members of the police and the CPS who you can pay to use their experience and contacts in these organisations to improve your chances of securing a prosecution.
“What they did was perfectly legal. The system allowed them to do it.”
He added: “I had to give up my dream because of a crime I didn’t commit.
“I will never work with children again. I will never put myself in that position of vulnerability.”
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