David Stus
Introduction
David Stus, a teacher at Ridgewood High School in Stourbridge, was banned from teaching for life in December 2021 after a Teaching Regulation Agency panel found he had deliberately filmed a 16-year-old girl from behind, focusing on her bottom, while she helped move items at his home on Bonfire Night 2018. The footage surfaced months later when it reached the girl’s family, and although the police took no further action, the school investigated and referred him to the regulator. Stus contested the case at a four-day hearing — the only one of the era’s home-filming cases fought on the evidence — and lost on the central claim: the panel concluded the steady, bottom-centred footage “could not have been filmed accidentally”. Decision maker John Knowles imposed a prohibition order with no review period on 21 December 2021.
Background Information
Stus was employed at Ridgewood High School, Stourbridge. In April 2019, the girl’s family received videos of her at Stus’s home address from his former partner, who had been sent them by Stus’s own family member; some of the footage had been edited so that, where she bent over, it looped on repeat. The family contacted both the police and the school where he worked. A criminal investigation followed, and the police took no further action; the school then ran its own investigation and referred the matter to the TRA. The girl, Child A in the published decision, was 16 years old at the time, connected to Stus through a family relationship the decision redacts, and had been trusted to be alone with him. The panel heard live evidence from the girl, her family member, a further witness and Stus himself, represented by counsel.
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation
Found to have deliberately and covertly filmed a 16-year-old girl from behind for sexual gratification; acquitted by police, found out by a regulator; lifetime ban.
On Bonfire Night 2018 the girl visited Stus’s home to pick up a barbecue and helped move heavy objects because of his back pain. His defence was that he “often had his phone set to record due to problems with neighbouring properties”, that he was “not very good with phones”, and that the recording — like his frequent pocket dials — was accidental. Witnesses corroborated his general clumsiness with phones. But the panel walked through the footage frame by frame: from the start to 0:18 the camera stays centred on the girl’s rear as she walks to the kitchen, “not shaky” and not deviating, in clear contrast to the aimless footage before and after; at 1:10, as she bends to place an object on the floor, the camera tracks down and back up again while focused on her bottom, and swings away the moment she turns around. A person would have had to hold the phone vertically, steady, and pointed at her continuously. In the panel’s view it would be “highly improbable for this to have happened accidently”, and it found the deliberate-filming allegation proved; the lack of her knowledge or consent was undisputed. The panel also found the filming was of a sexual nature and sexually motivated — “the only natural explanation” for covertly filming a child from behind and focusing on her bottom. A separate allegation that Stus himself had edited the footage into loops was not proved, the panel finding the regulator had not established provenance across the five versions of the footage in circulation.
Public Reaction and Consequences
Because the criminal investigation closed without action, the regulator’s hearing was the only public forum where the footage was ever examined, and the consequences were entirely regulatory: an immediate prohibition recommendation, accepted even by Stus’s own representative, and the lifetime ban that followed. The panel weighed genuine mitigation — a previously good history, an incident it accepted was out of character, and the fact that Stus had once acted heroically during a knife attack at the school, for which he received a police commendation — but found he had demonstrated no remorse or insight into his behaviour. It noted the misconduct involved a 16-year-old child with whom he was trusted to be alone, which made it “too serious to be characterised as anything other than serious sexual misconduct”, whatever its position on the spectrum of such cases.
Current Status
David Stus is prohibited from teaching indefinitely and cannot teach in any school, sixth form college, relevant youth accommodation or children’s home in England. His order carries no review period: he is not entitled to apply for restoration of his eligibility to teach. The underlying police decision to take no further action stands, meaning no criminal finding attaches to the filming — the prohibition rests on the panel’s civil-standard findings of unacceptable professional conduct and conduct that may bring the profession into disrepute. The decision records nothing further about his employment after the referral.
Impact on Their Career/Life
The case is the site’s clearest example of a contested hearing making things worse: a teacher with a commendation for bravery, an out-of-character finding and a defence that explained away everything except the footage itself, who ended with the same no-review ban as convicted sex offenders on this site because the panel found neither remorse nor insight. The panel’s frame-by-frame rejection of the accident defence — contrast deliberately steady, bottom-centred framing with genuinely aimless footage of the same video — is a template for how civil-standard findings can land where a criminal case closed. The one allegation that did not survive scrutiny, the editing claim, shows the same panel weighing evidence rather than assuming the worst.