Schoolboys were ‘excitedly’ viewing explicit images of their physics teacher after discovering her OnlyFans page, a disciplinary hearing has been told.
Pupils at Glasgow’s Bannerman High School in Scotland reportedly told their headteacher that their physics teacher Kirsty Buchan had signed up to the pornographic subscription site.
The mother-of-one, who used the moniker of ‘Jessica Jackrabbit x’, was today struck off from the profession by the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS), Mail Online reports.
Seonaidh Black, Bannerman High School’s headteacher, yesterday told of her shock at being told about the explicit images being discovered by students in November 2022.
One of her deputies approached her just minutes before the end of the school day to show her images of Ms Buchan ‘posing in lingerie’ and that ‘she had been shown these photos by pupils in S5’.
The 56-year-old told the hearing it was the talk of the school gates that day.
She said: ‘I was approached by some S5 and S6 boys, who were very excited.
‘They were saying things like, ‘Have you heard the news’. I said something like ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’ as I did not want to engage them in this kind of conversation.
‘I was then told something like, ‘If you haven’t heard, when you do, you’re going to go ballistic. Look out for Jessica Jackrabbit’.
‘As I came back into the building, at least two staff stopped to ask me if I knew about Kirsty. It was obvious at this point that everyone knew what was going on.’
Ms Buchan, who attended the high school as a student before eventually becoming a teacher there, was not present at the disciplinary hearing and did not send representation.
Ms Black said yesterday Ms Buchan was a ‘teacher who wanted to do a good job’ but there was a ‘small number of occasions where I felt she was not always clear on boundaries’.
She told the panel: ‘I do not want this to be wrongly construed, as this did not concern relationships with pupils or anything like that, but rather having poor judgement at times around things like her social media accounts being open where young people could perhaps access them.
‘I had informal conversations with her about these concerns when they came up, but they were certainly not anything more than minor concerns.’
Ms Buchan tendered her resignation from the school the same month the images emerged but her employment did not end until January 2023.
The headteacher told how one of her deputies was told by a worried mother that ‘her son had put messages on Kirsty’s OnlyFans profile’.
Since her profile was discovered Ms Buchan, now 34, has claimed to have made £60,000 in just one month by sharing the X-rated photographs.
She said she joined the site as she needed the extra money following a drop in her income from the school.
Ms Black told the hearing that pupils were accessing the account and added: ‘There’s still talk about it. Last week I had parents in school and they talked about OnlyFans.
‘So it is something that just has now become, in some people in this community in their heads, associated with the school, is that we have a teacher that is on OnlyFans.
‘And we don’t, obviously, now, but it has just become synonymous.’
The headteacher, who has worked at the school since 2001 and has been the head since October 2016, told the hearing: ‘Young people need to have confidence in teachers and teaching, and this is the issue in my view.
‘I do think it will be a long time before the situation involving Kirsty is a historical detail that is no longer talked about.
‘As a result of everything that has happened, safeguarding and the welfare of our pupils was a real concern, and we have talked to pupils about their online safety.’
Hannah Oakley, who investigated the case for GTCS, said that OnlyFans was a ‘social media network which allows users to post content which subscribers can then pay to access’ and that uploads are ‘predominantly pornographic or sexually explicit in nature’.
She said in August 2023, as part of the investigation, she accessed the public profile page belonging to Ms Buchan.
Ms Oakley told GTCS presenting officer Gary Burton there was no requirement to sign up to OnlyFans and no requirement to pay to access the information.
She added that she would consider the profile as pornographic and sexually explicit in nature.
Ms Buchan is accused of setting up the OnlyFans page, in which she referred to being a teacher and said she was a ‘good teacher gone bad … really bad’.
It is alleged that she failed to ‘ensure that her profile picture and ‘bio’ could not be accessed by any member of the public, including those under 18 years of age, without the need for them to log in or register to the OnlyFans site’.
She is also accused of taking part in a publicly accessible video interview with the press discussing it.
Because of these allegations, she is also accused of ‘lacking in integrity’ because she ‘failed to take steps to prevent herself being identifiable as a teacher and was aware that this risked bringing the teaching profession into disrepute’.
The panel found all allegations to be proven and moved on to investigating Ms Buchan’s fitness to teach.
But Mr. Burton said she was unfit to continue in the profession, and there was a ‘significant blurring of boundaries between her private life and her professional life’.
He said she had failed to act as a role model, and added: ‘The conduct of Ms Buchan demonstrates is entirely inappropriate behaviour, given a teacher’s position of trust and as a role model to pupils.
‘In short, the teacher has set up and maintained an online profile advertising and selling subscriptions and access to sexually explicit content of herself.
‘She used her profession in her bio as a selling tool and a way to draw viewers.’
He said she had never engaged in the process and showed ‘zero insight’, and added there was a ‘high risk of repetition’ in the case.
Mr Burton said: ‘By acting in the way she did her actions are fundamentally incompatible with being a registered teacher and I therefore invite the panel to find she is unfit to teach’.
The hearing continues.
