**Trigger Warning**Teacher-Pupil "affairs"?

[HarrietPotterska]

Just reading the thread about scandals at school and was shocked by how many people are saying that there were teacher-pupil relationships. It's touched a nerve for me as I was abused by a teacher, when I was in Year 8.

Does anyone here have experience of this? I'm interested whether people look back and don't consider it abuse? (Mine definitely was, I was 12).

Have NC for this as it's a sensitive topic.

At college in the late 90s. One lecturer was young himself - maybe 23/24. Was known to be in a relationship with an ex pupil. He cheated on her with another pupil in our second year of college. They went on to have children together.

Same college - another 2 lecturers had a ‘thing’ for a friend. They were acted upon.

We thought nothing of it at the time. Looking back now though, it’s disgusting behaviour and you wonder how many times they behaved in that way.

it was illegal in the 90s which is why the teacher left quickly after the revelation of the 'affair' with the 6th former (17/18?) But the language at the time was used to blur the line. As in it would have been fine if he hadn't been her teacher.

My school was rife.

I was groomed by my science teacher. He left shortly after. I don't think I was the only one.

Our IT teacher and scout leader was sent to prison for making indecent images. We all knew he was dodgy and told our parents who didn't believe us

The art teacher was arrested as well for an inappropriate relationship with a 6th former. Mind you he was well known with other teachers for being in the pub with 6th formers after school

This was in the 90s

I have name changed for this.

I have a family childhood friend who has been to prison for having sex with two pupils (both over 16). Apparently there were 5 other teachers in prison with him for doing the same thing. So - it is common but it is also seen as a crime.

Ironically it came out years and years later not through a police report but because one of the girls - who did not see herself as a victim - was jokingly telling someone about the time she shagged her “super hot teacher” and that someone was in a job role where she was obliged to report it. Once he had been arrested and the girl had been interviewed she then said that there were rumours of him and another girl a couple of years later.

This girl was a very different matter as she was very vulnerable and I think had been very damaged by what he did.

I don’t know if the CPS would still have prosecuted if it had just been the first girl (who was adamant that it was no big deal and completely consensual).

If I’m honest I still can’t believe it. (Not in a “I don’t believe it way - I believe it happened - I just can’t get my head around him being so stupid.) There is also part of me that wonders - was it stupid or was it actually evil. The second girl was vulnerable - did he target her on purpose? I have known this man since I was a toddler. Part of me thinks he was just a total bloody idiot. But part of me wonders if he isn’t an idiot - if this is the tip of the iceberg and he is and always was a sexual predator.

I go over and over our childhoods and examine every conversation I had with him, the girlfriends he had (did he date Liz because her parents were going through a divorce and so she was vulnerable and easy to manipulate).

I need to let it go but it is just so shocking. If I was to write down ten people I know who would never be convicted of a sex offence he would have been on there. He was just so reliable and sensible and nice. But he wasn’t any of those things. Which means I am a terrible judge of character.

All my happy childhood memories with him in are trashed.

And I keep wondering about the girl. Is she ok? Will she ever be ok?

Yes, it happened to me. Groomed from about the age of 13, nothing physical until the day I turned 16. I thought I was in love. I wasn't, I was a vulnerable child with an unhappy home life who was taken advantage of by a sexual predator.
I did report him many, many years later when I heard rumours of other 'situations' with young girls.
I'd kept letters and presents and I handed them over to the head teacher (still the same head and he was at the same school) The teacher was on the cusp of being sacked when he resigned.
The police couldn't prosecute him because I was over 16 and it was pre 2002 (I think that was the year) although they were extremely frustrated that they couldn't take it further.

One of the male teachers at our school started an affair with a girl in upper sixth in the spring term. No one found out about it until she turned up with him to collect her a-level results! My parents vaguely knew her parents and her parents basically said after she'd left that there was nothing they could do about it & let it run it's course.

Rife in our school too - one made the local papers when female 20 something teacher ‘had affair’ with 17 year old. They’re still together though.

I was 17 when I practically jumped on my 43 year old teacher I’d had a crush on since age 11 at our leavers do. I didn’t expect him to respond but he did, he was married with four children.

His excuse was if he was working in an office he would be having affairs with secretaries. He would also list some of the other girls in my year he’s always had a thing for.

He’s now a very well respected author and well known in his field. Our fling was seen as a big Gossip and a bit of a joke for years after I left.

All pretty messed up really.

Curious what everyone here thinks about Emanuel Macron and his wife then? She was his teacher.

Not "affairs" child sexual abuse.

My own child sexual abuse perpetrated by a family member was called an "affair" for which I was blamed.

@SebastianTheCrab

Curious what everyone here thinks about Emanuel Macron and his wife then? She was his teacher.

I was just thinking about that, and I think they first had a thing when he was 15 and she was mid-late 30s . I always feel uncomfortable reading about it because they said things like "he was very mature for his age etc etc" which is what abusers ALWAYS say - except in his case he probably was but still. But they are still together and it hasnt affected his career so he obviously doesn't consider himself a victim but I still think its super icky (and NOT because of the age difference, but because of the age they got together).

Thank you @Laquila I have told people who are close to me, some of whom went to my school and were taught by him so I wouldn’t feel comfortable talking in more detail to them.

I know I would benefit from some sort of counselling, I just need to sort it out. I did go through a mental health triage with my local IAPT but I didn’t meet their threshold for face to face sessions - so I’d have to pay. Which I can, it’s just one of those things I keep delaying.

OP - my situation, although abuse, was very different to you as I was 16/17 (but it was just post 2002 so I think illegal?) so I can’t fully empathise with what you’ve been through. I hope you’re ok

My history teacher at secondary married a former pupil, just after she’d left upper sixth. It didn’t last very long and they divorced. Then he did it again! Again just after she’d left upper sixth. So there’s no way he wasn’t involved with them before they’d left school. This was mid 1980’s and so, perfectly legal, but even so it was certain an eyebrow raiser amongst the pupils, no idea what the staff thought. But I’ve always looked back on that and thought, well I guess that was representative of the time. Then I found out there is a current teacher at my DDs school (I’ve got two sixth formers), that is married to a former pupil. Again they didn’t get married until after she’d gone to university and if they both maintain they only got together after she’d left the school there’s not much to be done about it, but I am shocked tbh.

I used to work with a woman who had been in a relationship with one of her teachers from 15, had his children, married him. He was abusive and her mental health suffered. When they divorced he managed to get full custody of the children due to her mental health. I couldn’t believe that someone who had had a relationship with and impregnated a child managed to get away with that.

changed most people aren’t going around looking for abuse, and abusers are v skilled in hiding abuse, and in getting victims to hide being abused.

Everything is reinterpreted when the truth is revealed and for many people thats too hard to face, regardless of how much more traumatic it was for the victim to experience. That’s why, imo, so many people, & society as a whole even, prefer to believe the abuser rather than the victim, or to reframe it as ‘not really abuse’. Because thats less disruptive to their own lives/beliefs/shared history.

By re-examining your past you are doing some of the hard work that others avoid and recognising that you didn’t see it in him isn’t necessarily your failing to judge his character correctly, it is further abuse by him - abuse of your good nature, abuse of society ‘norms’.

People who side with abusers “N would never do that” are in fact being abused by ‘N’ too, they’ve been groomed to believe the best of ‘N’ or at least, not the truth about ‘N’s’ behaviour.

It takes so much courage to stand up against abuse, direct victims need indirect victims (like you) to stand up too.

No-one wants to be abused, or to believe they have been tricked by an abuser, but it is not a moral or character failing to have been so - the moral/character failing in abuse lies squarely in the hands of the abuser.

Macron would have been of an age to legally consent in France at the time.

Not illegal but very inappropriate

The scandal at our school was a teacher who’d left his (another teacher at the same same school!) wife for a 16 year old pupil.

I believe they’ve been together since, 20 odd years now and have a family of their own.

It was largely swept under the carpet as she was over 16 but I still think it was awful and definitely was abuse.

I read that thread too and was really shocked at how many teacher-pupil relationships there were, I feel abit naive as there was nothing like that at my school so to hear how common it was and how it seems to have been brushed off is scary.

Teachers are in a position of trust to teach and safeguard the children in their care..not flirt with them ,abuse them , date them. Its disgusting. I'm sorry you went through that op.

A maths teacher at my secondary school was known by pretty much everyone to be having an affair with a student. She would have been 15 or 16 but he was much older, probably early 40s. I thought it was grim then and now I'm astonished that nobody did anything. We also had a very handsy science teacher who we all found very creepy. He took his own life after finally being sacked for his behaviour, I don't recall if there was police involvement.

Maths teacher and French teacher both tried it on with me when I was at school in the 70s. Funny how on the other thread and here, people accept that it was taken for granted then, but not now. That there was a difference in attitude. There really was.

When I was in high school 2001-2008 a teacher at my school was found to have been seeing a girl who was either 17 or 18 behind his wife's back. He ended up committing suicide.

If teachers who are grooming children don't think it's wrong, they wouldn't hide it.

I knew a girl who had an affair with a teacher in the last year of secondary school. She got pregnant by him and according to her they even had sex on the school premises. The whole year knew, it MUST have got back to some of the staff as some had kids at the school. He left very quickly after (not sure if he was fired) but certainly no police involvement despite it having started when she was 15. When I spoke with her about it she was very open and jovial and certainly wouldn’t have said it was abuse, but I wonder what she thinks now she looks back on it as an adult. I’ve lost touch so I’m not sure. I also know a woman who had a threesome with a teacher and another student in the late 80s in secondary school. She definitely looks upon it now as funny. It’s something they laugh about (she’s still friends with the other girl). But I nearly fell off my chair when she told me. Disgusting.

@ShalomToYouJackie That sounds very similar to something that happened at my school. I’d left at that point but my brother was still there and told me about it. This was in the early 2000s.
My husband’s teacher (different school) tried to abuse him during a school trip to France. He got away from her and nothing more happened, but he thinks he may not have been the only one she tried it with. This would have been in the 90s and he was around 15.

I've name changed for this.

I finished school in 1999, my Mum's best friends daughter was in the year above me. The summer she finished Year 11 (aged 16) it came out that she had been in a long term sexual relationship with a married 34 year old PE (why is it always PE?!) teacher who was married to the French teacher and had a young baby. The parents found explicit pictures and letters under her bed.

I can't describe how bad the subsequent fall out was.... the Wife moved back to France with the young baby and the man went NC with them. He had a baby with my Mum's friends daughter before she was 19, and then two further babies. He dominated her for years, alienating all her friends, career hopes.... she lost her childhood, no girls holidays, college or anything. She later left him, after nearly 20 years, and he then took his own life. The daughter in France didn't even know about the truth about her Dad.

I met up with some old friends recently and we were talking about how it was just the norm then... older girls got abused by teachers during school trips and overnight sporting excursions. It's repulsive, and most definitely abuse..... my heart goes out to anyone that this has happened to...

I am sorry for what happened to you and hope you have found some peace.

I’m shocked to think of the tolerance of this abuse in the past. From my school I remember a trip to Paris, where the Head of Art had a sixth former draped on his lap, and as the evening went on put her over this knee and spanked her. Other teachers were there.

She used to produce artwork themed around her vagina and this was displayed proudly in the art block. It was almost seen as taboo breaking and wonderful that she was producing very explicit paintings and these were hung in the stairwells.

When the “relationship” came out her family didn’t want to take it further and he confided in other sixth formers he wanted to save his marriage with his wife and how it jeopardised his relationship with his daughter.

She was living away from her parents to attend the school and had a religious upbringing (her father was a minister). She was nearly 18 as well. Apparently her parents decided not to take it further.

The only consequence was that they weren’t to “see” each other and the art work came down overnight.

Everyone knew something was awry for a long time. He was a really unpleasant, egocentric person and overly involved with students esp sixth formers. I can remember thinking it was wrong and being angry when the abuse (clearly long running) was confirmed. I argued with friends who were feeling sorry him.

As an adult I can’t believe that no one was looking out for the child or intervened, I really wonder how she thinks about that period and whether she is ok now. He was still teaching when I left and I can’t believe that criminal charges weren’t brought. They should have been.