When Emanuel Tabachnick, a teachers’ union attorney in the US, addresses seminars on defending those accused of child maltreatment, he always tells of his high school days. A poor maths student, he got through only because a woman teacher voluntarily met him before school and taught him in a room alone. “It breaks my heart, but when I talk to teachers now I tell them never to be alone in a room with a student,” he says.

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