Teacher struck off for sending sexual messages

Omar Patel, formerly a teacher at Joseph Leckie Academy in Walsall, sent sexual messages to an undercover officer who said they were a 13-year-old girl

A teacher has been struck off after engaging in online sexual communication with an undercover police officer who was pretending to be a 13-year-old girl.

Omar Patel, aged 40, had been a teacher at Joseph Leckie Academy in Walsall since September 2017.

On 1 December 2023, he made the communication with the undercover officer, telling them he used Snapchat to send "dirty" videos and pictures of his penis. He was arrested the same day.

He later pleaded guilty to attempting/engaging in sexual communication with a child at Birmingham Crown Court, where he was sentenced to 22 weeks' imprisonment, suspended for 2 years.

He was also ordered to undertake 120 hours of unpaid work and 30 days of rehabilitation activity, and made subject to a sexual harm prevention order and sex offenders' notification requirements for seven years.

Now, the Teaching Regulation Agency has banned him from the profession and prevented him from being able to apply to be restored to the register in the future.

The panel said that in November 2023, Patel had also used an online chatroom and spoken to someone who told him they were 13, but on that occasion he stopped the conversation, a teaching tribunal said.

Patel, who resigned from his teaching post after being arrested in December 2023, admitted the facts and asked the panel to consider their judgement without a hearing, which they accepted.

While the panel acknowledged that Patel had admitted to the behaviour, they found there was "no evidence of insight, remorse or remediation."

The panel's decision maker, Marc Cavey, said: "In my judgement, the lack of evidence that Mr Patel has developed any insight into his behaviour means that there is some risk of the repetition of this behaviour and this puts at risk the future wellbeing of pupils.

"In my view, it is necessary to impose a prohibition order in order to maintain public confidence in the profession."