He was stood down by Havelock North Intermediate in 2024 after his offending came to light.<\/p>\n
Pleaded guilty to 12 charges<\/p>\n
He later pleaded guilty to eight charges of sexual conduct with a child under 12 and four charges of sexual conduct with a child under 16. <\/p>\n
The offending he was convicted for involved five boys.<\/p>\n
A Crown summary of facts said Ireland was twice seen by another teacher with children sitting on his knee during lunch breaks. <\/p>\n
He was spoken to by a senior teacher after these incidents and was told \u201cwhat he had done was inappropriate and that he was putting himself at risk as a young male teacher\u201d.<\/p>\n
The senior teacher also spoke to Ireland several times about being alone with students. <\/p>\n
Spoke to students about relationships and bodies<\/p>\n
The summary said one day, Ireland spoke to students in his class about relationships and their bodies.<\/p>\n
After class, he offered to teach one boy more in one-on-one sessions, during which he got the child to remove clothing. Ireland then touched him indecently.<\/p>\n
The boy did not tell anyone about this until two years later when he told his parents, who called police.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, Ireland had interactions with other boys, including getting them to remove their clothing to get \u201cmeasurements\u201d and take photographs.<\/p>\n
He brushed his hand across one boy\u2019s buttocks several times. <\/p>\n
He told one boy he was his \u201cfavourite\u201d and bought him gifts. <\/p>\n
He tried to discuss sex education with this boy, but the child said only his class teacher was allowed to discuss those matters and told Ireland that.<\/p>\n
Electronic devices seized<\/p>\n
Police seized several electronic devices from Ireland 24 hours after he was stood down by Havelock North Intermediate. <\/p>\n
Matthew Ireland has been sentenced to three years in prison for his offending. Photo \/ Ric Stevens<\/p>\n
One of the parents, however, said that in that time he had put his phone and computer through \u201cfactory resets\u201d, which would have erased their contents. <\/p>\n
Several witnesses described Ireland\u2019s offending as grooming. One mother questioned where it would have ended.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow dare you take photos of my partially naked son,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
\u201cHow dare you groom him. How far was this going to go? What did you have planned if this hadn\u2019t been stopped?\u201d<\/p>\n
Judge Bridget Mackintosh said Ireland\u2019s offending had lasting and profound impacts on the school communities.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ripple effect has been devastating,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Judge Mackintosh imposed a sentence of three years in prison and placed Ireland\u2019s name on the child sex offender register. <\/p>\n
Port Ahuriri School principal Glenn France said Ireland had caused \u201cdeep harm\u201d, shattering the trust that was the foundation of every relationship within a school.<\/p>\n
Ireland\u2019s behaviour had been deliberate and calculated, and it was essential that he not be allowed into a position of responsibility in the future. <\/p>\n
\u2018Removed from the community\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cWe firmly believe he cannot be trusted in any environment where children are present,\u201d France said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe ideal outcome … is that he is removed from the community.\u201d<\/p>\n
Havelock North Intermediate principal Nigel Messervy said Ireland\u2019s breach of trust was \u201cdevastating\u201d for the students, their families and school staff. <\/p>\n
He said it had been the \u201cmost difficult time of my career\u201d and the school had diverted $70,000 from teaching and learning to spend on investigations and legal processes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis offending has contributed to widespread distrust of teachers, particularly male teachers,\u201d Messervy said.<\/p>\n
Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME\u2019s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke\u2019s Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of frontline experience as a probation officer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI was 9 years old. I didn\u2019t know anything about sexuality,\u201d the boy said. \u201cI didn\u2019t know that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189441,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[17525,9092,1763,1561,1061,5767,11557,8912,1976,42,8019,3369,43,1118,30083,28703,384,7680,17703,544,3767,7574,1961,40,38,41,39,1455],"class_list":["post-189440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-17525","tag-against","tag-article","tag-bay","tag-children","tag-convicted","tag-describes","tag-distressing","tag-hawkes","tag-headlines","tag-ireland","tag-matthew","tag-news","tag-of","tag-offences","tag-offending","tag-people","tag-sex","tag-sexual","tag-some","tag-students","tag-teacher","tag-this","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-warning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}