Caught red-handed with this one. She was a student at a Uni in Jakarta and wanted private lessons in IELTS. She booked 30 hours of private sessions; I was supposed to teach 15 of them and Helmy was supposed to teach the other 15. But I only ever taught her once for an hour and a half. There were numerous irregularities with the class and schedule. Helmy kept changing the times and days and schedules of the lessons and Helmy had ended up teaching her 7 times and I had only taught her once. He was lazy generally and was always trying to palm off his classes on other teachers and go home, but he insisted on teaching more than his fair share of classes with this girl. Oh, I should have mentioned, she was nineteen years old.
Did you suspect that there were sexual motivations for these changes?
No I didn’t. Helmy’s behaviour was odd and erratic generally so I was used to strange goings on: I did think he was being weird about this class but I didn’t believe there was some romantic intrigue involved. Perhaps I was very naive.
You say you caught him ‘red handed’?
One night I stayed back late in the staffroom. Helmy probably assumed I had gone home or maybe he was just brazen. I don’t know how that man thinks. I came downstairs and found them sitting in the former canteen together. They were sitting right next to each other on a bench and they were holding hands. They were, just as with Ms. ABC earlier, face to face and he was whispering to her in a soft, seductive voice. He thought he was a real Romeo this Helmy.
I said, “I’m going home now Helmy. See you tomorrow.” He knew I’d seen them but he didn’t seem remotely flustered or concerned. He just sat there holding both her hands in his.
I spoke to Pauwsan shortly afterwards and said that for multiple reasons including the incident with this student, I was no longer willing to work with Helmy. I would go back to being a regular teacher and finish my contract in that capacity. There were more assurances and broken promises from Pauwsan Sutanto, a classic back-flipper, but Helmy was soon gone.