Teacher Jailed for Sex with Pupil

I have been browsing the news section of the BBC website and stumbled upon this story. 'Teacher jailed for sex with pupil'.

As I read on the story unfolds to inform me that a 26 year old female teacher who taught music at a prestigious school in London, England had a five month affair with a 15 year old girl who attended her lessons. The story goes on to tell us that the teacher became close to the youngster as they met for coffee after classes, but was pressured into the relationship by the pupil. Surely this teacher knew that what she was doing was wrong and how did she allow herself to be pressured by a 15 year old girl! She even took the girl for a weekend away in Paris, this is not the behaviour that we expect from a school teacher.

A statement from the girl's parents said the teacher went 'out of her way to befriend them and their vulnerable daughter' and 'we understand that for over five months she was betraying our trust and our daughter's'. They went on to say 'she did not stay true to her professional responsibility'. All of this I totally agree with, but were they not being somewhat naive to allow their daughter to spend a weekend in Paris alone with her teacher.

In court, the teacher pleaded guilty to six counts of sexual activity with a female child under the age of 16, her name will also now appear on the sex offenders register and she was sent to jail for 15 months for her crime. So her life as a teacher is over and her chances of gaining employment again is seriously reduced, but she knew the consequences of her actions and was prepared to risk all for this affair.

I have worked with children of all ages and in all the time I spent with them I was only too aware of how to behave and how not to behave, there can be no excuse for the teacher's actions and even if she was pressured into this she was the adult and should of known the difference between right and wrong.

There have always been certain people that we have believed that we can trust them implicitly, school teachers are among these people. But this case shows that trust is often betrayed and we can never be sure of who is good and who is not. I write this, not to scare people, but to raise awareness in us all. If my child befriended a teacher and she or he appeared to be getting 'special treatment', such as weekends away, then I would have to question the teacher's motives. This may cause controversy, but if the teacher has nothing to hide then they would have nothing to fear.