UNITED KINGDOM
Independent
Report into the Jeremy Forrest affair damns school for ignoring seven months of warning signs that led to the abduction of a pupil
RICHARD GARNER Author Biography EDUCATION EDITOR Monday 16 December 2013
A secondary school repeatedly turned a blind eye to evidence one of its teachers was having an affair with a pupil until it was too late to stop him abducting her, a serious case review concluded yesterday.
Seven months after the first complaint was raised, the teacher – Jeremy Forrest, from Bishop Bell Church of England school in Eastbourne, East Sussex – fled to France with her where they had sex. He has been jailed for five-and-a-half years.
During these seven months, the school was told that the two had been seen holding hands on a school trip, had tweeted messages such as “miss you” to each other, while other pupils had spotted an “inappropriate” photograph of him on her mobile.
Yet the school repeatedly failed to see this as evidence he was an abuser and appeared to adopt a default position of supporting a colleague – unable to comprehend he could be in the wrong.
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