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…