Posted on 08/06/2002 7:01:58 PM PDT by aculeus
A teacher with a touring English schoolboy rugby team became so drunk on a night out in Queenstown at the weekend he staggered into the wrong hotel and fell into bed alongside a young woman.
He was caressing the 22-year-old when her screams brought friends running from the room next door.
David George Higgins, 36, of Lincolnshire, England, had two very black eyes when he appeared in the Invercargill District Court yesterday.
His lawyer told the court Higgins had no complaint about the black eyes - he considered them just punishment.
Higgins, a Scotsman, was discharged without conviction after pleading guilty to indecent assault and being in a building without reasonable excuse.
He looked like a broken man, Judge Noel Walsh said. The judge said Higgins was ashamed, embarrassed and humiliated.
Judge Walsh said the victim was also a Scot who was in New Zealand on a working holiday.
He ordered Higgins to pay her $700 by Monday for emotional harm. Higgins is due to leave New Zealand on Thursday next week.
Prosecutor Tim Hambleton said Higgins went out for dinner on Saturday night and drank a lot of wine. He continued drinking at the bar.
"If you face up to this I am sure (your colleagues) will be compassionate." - Judge Noel Walsh
When Higgins went to rejoin the team at the Gardens Parkroyal Hotel he mistakenly ended up at the Ambassador Motel, Mr Hambleton said.
Higgins wandered through the building, went into an unlocked room and took off his clothes. He went into another room and got into bed.
The woman in the bed ran screaming from the room after waking to find Higgins rubbing her back and buttocks. Her companions called police, who found Higgins asleep in the bed.
Duty solicitor Traicee McKenzie said Higgins was aware of the example he was setting the students in his care. His colleagues knew he was in some sort of bother but not exactly what it was, she said.
Higgins was gutted, embarrassed and humiliated and had considered resigning from his teaching position.
She asked Judge Walsh to suppress publication of Higgins' name and discharge him without conviction because of the impact a conviction of this sort could have on his teaching career.
He would have to come to some arrangements with his colleagues to raise the $700 to pay reparation, she said.
Judge Walsh said Higgins should put himself in his victim's shoes. He was convinced Higgins was sincerely remorseful. He said Higgins had no previous convictions, there was no physical harm to the victim and Higgins had accepted responsibility for what had happened.
Name suppression was refused. "I am sure you will be man enough to face up to that. If you face up to this I am sure (your colleagues) will be compassionate," Judge Walsh said
He should lose his job NOW ... but instead the social-liberals will wink-wink, nod-nod and give him a pass. Hell, he'll probably not have to pay for his beer for years, just to retell his story ... one more time.
I hope one of the parents finds the stones to sue the school district if this drunken lush isn't dismissed promptly.
Funny story, but the woman obviously left her common sense unlatched when she went to sleep with her motel room door unlocked.
The going-to-bed-drunk part is all too familiar, but not the wrong-bed-wrong-body. Some of us lead awfully dull lives.
... stuffed and mounted over the mantle in the judge's chamber as part of his sentence.
I think being gutted is a little harsh.
Whereas some of us flirt with disaster without actually achieving it. I confess to once getting likkered up enough to pass out on the wrong...lawn. Made it as far as the next-door neighbors (who, thankfully, weren't home at the time) on my way home from a party, and didn't realize what happened until the morning, when my father awoke me with the garden hose....
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