{"id":606154,"date":"2026-04-14T11:47:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T11:47:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/606154\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T11:47:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T11:47:11","slug":"teacher-charged-with-breaking-students-teeth-takes-stand-in-own-defence-in-supreme-court-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/606154\/","title":{"rendered":"Teacher charged with breaking student’s teeth takes stand in own defence in Supreme Court trial"},"content":{"rendered":"

A former teacher accused of striking a girl in the face during a confrontation over a confiscated phone has admitted in court he was “angry” and “frustrated” with the student, who he described as “an exceptionally rude child”.<\/p>\n

Darroch Robinson, 56, is on trial in the Northern Territory Supreme Court charged with one count of unlawfully causing serious harm following the classroom incident at the then-Darwin Middle School, where he was teaching history in 2024.<\/p>\n

He has pleaded not guilty, and today took the stand in his own defence.<\/p>\n

The court previously heard Mr Robinson had confiscated the “physically small” student’s phone before she returned and demanded it back, calling him a “dumb c*** or a fat c***” when he refused.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Darroch Robinson was a history teacher at Darwin Middle School, now known as Darwin High School, when the incident happened in 2024. (ABC News: Marcus Kennedy)<\/p>\n

In testifying, Mr Robinson \u2014 a former defence force member who served in Afghanistan \u2014 told the jury he was “utterly horrified” by the incident, which resulted in the girl’s front teeth being knocked out.<\/p>\n

He said the student had been difficult during an exam, and, in a police interview played to the court, described her as a student of “concern” who did not follow the rules.<\/p>\n

Mr Robinson told the court he had moved towards the door to exit the classroom to take the phone to the office and did not know where the student was when he turned around “very, very fast”.<\/p>\n

“I heard her call me a stupid, fat c*** and I spun around,” he told jurors today.<\/p>\n

“There are some things as a teacher that you let slide, but that level of abuse is not something, especially in front of a class, I would let go.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Darroch Robinson says he was “frustrated” after the girl swore at him, but the contact was “a complete accident”. (ABC News: Roxanne Fitzgerald)<\/p>\n

“My elbow or forearm, I think it was my forearm, made contact with [the student’s] head,” he said, adding she then stumbled past him and fell onto a desk.<\/p>\n

“Going by the physics, I would say it was a fairly hard strike.”<\/p>\n

Girl ‘performing for other students’<\/p>\n

Defence lawyer Peter Maley asked Mr Robinson if he knew the child was behind him at the time, to which he replied “no”.<\/p>\n

“It was a complete accident,” he said.<\/p>\n

Mr Robinson also conceded he told the student, “I don’t care” after she said he had ruined her life by knocking her teeth out.<\/p>\n

“At the time I was frustrated,” he said.<\/p>\n

“But I also thought that what she was doing was drama for effect, performing for other students in the class.”<\/p>\n

Mr Robinson told the court he went into “shock” after seeing the student was bleeding.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Sophia Bicknell suggested to Darroch Robinson he was lying about where he was in the room when he made contact with the student. (ABC News: Roxanne Fitzgerald)<\/p>\n

“I was utterly horrified by what had happened and I couldn’t move,” he said.<\/p>\n

Under cross-examination by Crown prosecutor Sophia Bicknell, Mr Robinson demonstrated for the jury how he said he had brought his arm back after opening a door, accidentally striking the girl.<\/p>\n

However, Ms Bicknell suggested that because the broken tooth was found away from the door, the incident must have happened closer to the middle of the classroom.<\/p>\n

“I suggest to you that you are lying when you say that you turned and struck her when you were opening the door,” she said.<\/p>\n

“You’re someone with physical training from the army.<\/p>\n

“Mr Robinson, I suggest this wasn’t an accident. You did this because you were angry.”<\/p>\n

In response, Mr Robinson denied lying about what happened, but eventually conceded he was “angry” rather than merely “frustrated”.<\/p>\n

Court hears teacher allegedly struck student in face, broke her teeth<\/a><\/p>\n

A former Darwin teacher has pleaded not guilty to causing serious harm after allegedly striking a female student in the face.<\/p>\n

Earlier in the trial, Year 9 Chinese language teacher Nickolaos Miaris testified to hearing yelling and swearing while teaching a class next door.<\/p>\n

Mr Miaris said he went to the back of his classroom, where there was an opening between the rooms, and saw the student “was really upset” and yelling at Mr Robinson.<\/p>\n

He said the girl had a “bloodied lip” and he recalled Mr Robinson turning to him and saying, “I’m going to go report myself”.<\/p>\n

According to agreed facts tendered at the trial, since the incident the student has needed ongoing intervention from dentists, attempts to add caps to her teeth have repeatedly failed and she has had ongoing mental health issues.<\/p>\n

‘A freak accident’<\/p>\n

In her closing address to jurors, Ms Bicknell said Mr Robinson’s account of the incident had changed “slightly” and his evidence that it happened at the doorway “didn’t make sense”.<\/p>\n

She said significant force would have been required to knock the student over and suggested the hit to her face was a “targeted location”.<\/p>\n

“The evidence only points one way, and that is Mr Robinson was angry [at the student], frustrated and stressed, and when sworn at and followed he lost his cool and did something horrible,” she said.<\/p>\n

But Mr Maley asked the jury to give his client the benefit of the doubt, describing him as a war veteran with a “positive good character”.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Peter Maley says his client is a person of good character and the interaction was “a freak accident”. (ABC News: Roxanne Fitzgerald)<\/p>\n

“The Crown had to prove \u2026 that it was not an accident, that he had the requisite intent or the requisite foresight,” he said.<\/p>\n

“This was a freak accident.”<\/p>\n

In summing up the case, Chief Justice Michael Grant told the jury there was no dispute that Mr Robinson struck the student or that she suffered an injury.<\/p>\n

“This case boils down to a single issue and that’s whether you can be satisfied the accused intended to strike the student, or whether there is a reasonable possibility the contact was accidental,” he said.<\/p>\n

The jury is expected to begin its deliberations tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former teacher accused of striking a girl in the face during a confrontation over a confiscated phone…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":606155,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[29255,64,63,294962,294224,294961,224244,44,28210,30024,1049,30023,169050,1109],"class_list":{"0":"post-606154","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-australia","8":"tag-angry","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-darroch-robinson","12":"tag-darwin-high-school","13":"tag-fractured-teeth","14":"tag-freak-accident","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-strike","17":"tag-student","18":"tag-supreme-court","19":"tag-teacher","20":"tag-testify","21":"tag-trial"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606154\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/606155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}