A gay headteacher has won a sex discrimination case against the primary school which sacked him for having sex with two 17-year-olds he met on the dating app Grindr.
Matthew Aplin, 42, who was principal at Tywyn Primary School in Sandfields, West Glamorgan, was openly gay according to a new court ruling. But while police and his local authority bosses decided no criminal offence had been committed the school governors decided to dismiss him.
He challenged their decision but in the end resigned, then claimed he was a victim of constructive dismissal and mounted an employment tribunal claim on the basis he was a victim of “unfair dismissal and sexual orientation discrimination.”
Mr Aplin argued that what he had done was lawful and part of his private life and that the officer’s report and the management case were “biased and homophobic.”
The Employment Appeals Tribunal (EAT) found that Mr Aplin would have been treated differently were he a heterosexual male having sex with two teenage girls, or a woman and two teenage boys.
