Friday, September 13, 2024 - A Ghanaian teacher in the UK has been banned from the classroom for life after she reportedly smuggled a 14-year-old African child into Britain to act as her 'slave'.
Ernestina Quainoo, 53, has been struck off the teaching
register after lying about her child trafficking conviction when she got her
job in 2019.
According to Mail Online, details of her criminal past only
came to light in December 2022 when a colleague was shown a newspaper report
about her shocking past and informed her bosses.
In 2008, a court heard Mrs Quainoo, who moved to the UK from
Ghana in 2004, and her husband Samuel smuggled the child into Britain with the
promise of education and a job when she arrived. Sadly, the teacher and
her husband, then aged 59, reportedly forced the girl to cook and clean the
house for 18 months as well as babysit their two young sons.
It was gathered that the couple stopped the teen going to school and making friends and dressed her in hand-me-downs, apart from once buying her T-shirts with 'my other name is bitch' printed on them.
The girl told cops and social workers that she was never
paid a penny and she also contemplated suicide.
Her ordeal only ended when she fell ill and escaped to get
medical help.
When police arrived, Samuel Quainoo, who has a previous
conviction for false accounting, claimed the child had cast a 'voodoo' spell on
him and his wife.
In 2008, Samuel Quainoo was jailed for 18 months and
his wife was given a suspended sentence for assisting unlawful immigration
into the UK.
Teaching watchdogs were told that when interviewed for a job
as a class teacher at Cherry Lane Primary School, West Drayton, in May 2019
Mrs. Quainoo did ultimately declare she had an 'immigration offence' conviction
after initially denying she had any convictions, claiming this was an oversight
in her haste to complete the application form.
She was hired in July of that year as a teacher of Key Stage
One pupils but in December 2022 the school was tipped off about the news
articles about the 2008 court case.
Safeguarding concerns were raised, and she was suspended 10
days before Xmas, pending an investigation.
She resigned in February but her former employers continued
the disciplinary process and referred the matter to the Teaching Regulation
Agency.
The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act gives people with spent
convictions and cautions the right not to have to disclose when applying for
most jobs.
So when Mrs Quainoo filled in the application form she
initially replied 'No' to the section dealing with past convictions.
But in a subsequent Disclosure Statement, Mrs Quainoo did
correct this and declare she had been convicted for 'Assist Unlawful
Immigration into an EU Member State' on 11 July 2008.
Mrs Quainoo claimed, within the Disclosure Statement, that
this conviction related to when she 'assisted and came along [to the UK] with a
lady I lived with as a family member'.
The Disclosure Statement continued: 'Two years later, in June 2006, this came to the attention of the authorities and I was arrested.
'Due to my inability to demonstrate that she [the
individual] was a member [of] the family, I was charged with assisting her
unlawful entry into the UK on 11th July, for which I pleaded guilty as I
completely misunderstood the cultural differences that exist between the two
countries.
'As a result of this, I was given a two-year suspended
sentence and required to undertake a 'Women's Programme' for a few months'.
The panel heard from the presenting officer that Mrs
Quainoo's conviction as described in the Disclosure Statement was not
'protected' under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act.
Sue Davies, who chaired the TRA hearing, concluded: 'It was
therefore disclosable for the purposes of the application form.
'Accordingly, the panel concluded that the information Mrs
Quainoo provided on the application form when she answered 'No' to that
question was not correct.'
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