UNITED KINGDOM
Herts and Essex Observer

School staff missed repeated opportunities to blow the whistle on inappropriate conduct between teacher Jeremy Forrest and a teenage schoolgirl before he abducted her, a damning review has found.

Concerns raised by children about the growing closeness between married maths teacher Forrest and his pupil were “repeatedly dismissed”.

Instead, Bishop Bell C of E School in Eastbourne, East Sussex, adopted a “default position” of “intuitively supporting a colleague” in the face of evidence that he might be an abuser.

It was also revealed that the girl, who cannot be named, was never spoken to by school staff in a supportive way, according to the serious case review by the East Sussex Local Safeguarding Children Board.