Alexander Peredruk
Introduction
Alexander Peredruk, a teacher at St Cuthbert’s Roman Catholic High School in Rochdale between 2015 and 2018, is prohibited from teaching indefinitely after a Teaching Regulation Agency panel found proven — on police forensic evidence he never contested in person — that he searched for, downloaded, received and viewed indecent images of children over a two-year period. Peredruk was interviewed by Greater Manchester Police in 2018 after a warrant seized his devices, but the police took no further action; the case reached the TRA instead, where he declined to attend his own hearing and was represented only in correspondence. Decision maker Sarah Buxcey made the prohibition order on 11 June 2021 with no review period, finding the panel’s conclusions necessary to maintain public confidence in the profession.
Background Information
Peredruk’s letter of employment confirmed his start date at St Cuthbert’s RC High School as 1 September 2015. He remained employed there until 31 August 2018, with his last teaching day on 20 July 2018, confirmed by his own undated letter of resignation. The conduct found against him occurred while he was a serving teacher: a GMP forensic investigation report dated 22 August 2018 placed the activity between approximately March 2016 and March 2018. Acting on intelligence, police obtained a warrant, searched his home and seized mobile devices, cameras and computer equipment, which the GMP Digital Investigation Unit subjected to forensic analysis. Peredruk was interviewed by police in October 2018, after he had already resigned; no further action followed.
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation
Allegations found proved by a regulator, never charged. Peredruk neither admitted nor denied the allegations, declined to attend the hearing, and the police took no further action after interviewing him. The findings below rest on the civil standard — the balance of probabilities — applied by a professional conduct panel, and were never tested or adjudicated in a criminal court.
The forensic examination found that a black computer tower retrieved from Peredruk’s home contained artefacts showing a number of deleted files with names indicative of suspected indecent images of children. The originals themselves were not recovered — the panel heard that the file contents were not found — but the footprint of the files remained. The police witness, from the force’s Sexual Crime Unit, testified about the investigation and stated that sexual gratification is the usual motivation for similar offences the unit investigates, and that Peredruk had indicated no alternative explanation during the investigation. The panel held that even without direct evidence of what the deleted files contained, sexual motivation could properly be inferred from all the circumstances — particularly the explicit sexualised imagery referenced in the filenames, which a reasonable person would consider sexual by its nature.
Peredruk engaged with the process only through his solicitor, telling the TRA in writing on 2 June 2021 that he did not wish to attend and was content for the hearing to proceed without him — three years after the referral was made on 13 September 2019. The panel applied the R v Jones safeguards, noted his continuous engagement by correspondence, and proceeded in his absence. It found both allegations proved: the searching, downloading, receiving and viewing of one or more indecent images of children between March 2016 and March 2018, and that the conduct was sexually motivated. It found the conduct amounted to unacceptable professional conduct and conduct that may bring the profession into disrepute, and recommended prohibition.
Public Reaction and Consequences
The sequence left Peredruk facing no criminal consequence at all: police interviewed him and took no further action, and his resignation on 31 August 2018 — which predated his October 2018 interview — ended his classroom career without any published finding at the time. The TRA referral five weeks later became the only public accounting, and even that he chose to answer by letter rather than attendance. The decision records no mitigation evidence, no expressions of remorse and no insight into the conduct; his non-attendance and written refusal to engage with the facts left the panel to decide the case entirely on the police evidence. The prohibition order with no review period is the outcome the panel’s findings and the decision maker’s assessment of public confidence produced.
Current Status
Peredruk is prohibited from teaching indefinitely and cannot teach in any school, sixth form college, relevant youth accommodation or children’s home in England. The order, made by decision maker Sarah Buxcey on 11 June 2021, contains no review period at all: the decision states he “shall not be entitled to a review period”, so unlike most prohibited teachers he cannot apply even years later for the order to be reconsidered. He retains a right of appeal to the High Court within 28 days of notice. The decision records no criminal conviction, no media coverage and no public statement from Peredruk; the published decision itself is the only public record of why he left teaching in 2018.
Impact on Their Career/Life
The case shows the regulator filling the gap a criminal investigation left: police seized the devices, found deleted-file footprints consistent with indecent images of children, interviewed the teacher, and still took no further action — leaving a serving teacher’s conduct unmarked by any public record until the TRA panel weighed the same evidence on the civil standard. The outcome is one of the strongest the regulator can issue short of conviction: a lifetime ban with no review period, imposed on a man who never admitted anything and never appeared. For the site it documents how deleted-file forensics — filenames surviving where the files themselves did not — can carry a finding of proven misconduct, and how declining to attend a hearing leaves the evidence entirely unchallenged.