Too feel devastated for the wife of the teacher who has run off to France with his 15 year old pupil?

[chipsandmushypeas]

What on earth went through his head when he decided to do this?! The poor woman has taken all her social networks down out of humiliation I presume. link

Crazy.

I have met a real life paedophile teacher when I was 13. He was leacherous toward me but didn't actually abuse me. I guess I was too old. He did abuse girls 2 years younger than me. Now you can argue about words all you like but I do not see that this relationship was any different. The teacher above acted like he was "the same age" flirtation wise and I guess that this teacher would normalise his behaviour. Lots of convicted sex offenders will say that the children "wanted" them as well.

ok it is the DailyFail and I will look for confirmation elsewhere but

"A spokesman from East Sussex County Council admitted that the school had been aware of concerns about the teacher?s relationship with Megan but refused to confirm when these were first raised.
He said: ?The investigation was ongoing when she went missing. The school, in conjunction with the county council and the police, had been addressing concerns that had been raised on this matter.?
However, Sussex Police said they had only been made aware of the issue last week"

Annie, exactly! Thank you :)

"He's slept with a child. Ok not a 10 year old child but a 15 year old child."

1. We don't know that he has slept with her. He may have. We don't know.

1. The law states a difference between an adult sleeping with a 10 year old child (charge with paedophilia) and a 15 year old child (charge with unlawful sex) See?

Just because YOU feel like he is a paedo, doesn't make it so.

Anyway you keep on with your stance. I'm off.

Keep on my stance of using the right words in the right place? You know, I think I will.

By keep arguing over the correct term it seems to me like you are diminishing what is going on.

By applying inaccurate terms in a sensationalist manner it seems to me like you are diminishing what is going on.

MrSunshine!

How DARE you use correct terminology! It's DISGUSTING.

How DARE you use correct terminology! It's DISGUSTING.

Surely you mean DISCUSTING

I think I have a teeny bit of a girly crush on Mr Sunshine. Even if he is, you know, one of the other sort.

Mr Sunshine is a man?!?!

Apologies for correct spelling of disgusting, you are quite right Pandemoniaa. :(

Does anyone else think that there was something odd about the police appeal with her parents?

Do the police normally do an appeal for missing 15 year olds, particularly when they strongly suspect who the 15 year old is with?

I'm not even sure what I think was odd about it all. Anyway, interested to see what others think. Apologies if this has already been mentioned further up - there are alot of posts on this.

I think that perhaps if the girl saw how worried her parents were she might contact them.

Frankly if it was my daughter I would want to hunt him fiwn and kill him with my bare hands.

It's a police investigation though isn't it, and they were involved before they ran away. Also I can't remember a TV appeal that didn't have the police present? I think as much as anything they advise parents on the best language to use and also help field press questions so as to head off any comments that might be counter productive.

The police were protecting the parents from the significant number of fuckwits journalists who would love to go down the road of "you bad, bad parents, how could you not stop your daughter doing such terrible things" and "the bad, bad girl, she looks older than 15 and must have led him on".

At the moment, the parents and the police just want her back. Safely.

They can sort out what to do with him later.

Hysterical newspaper headlines labelling him as a paedophile who should go to jail for the rest of his life won't encourage him to bring her back, or encourage her to abandon him, with they?

It's also a missing person enquiry. Until she is found, it's a police matter.

Not every missing teen will be the subject of a national appeal but the media are running the story heavily, so any appeal was bound to receive national coverage. Also as there is a need for the appeal to reach France, or other destination/s unknown, I can see the case for maximising coverage.

I guess they also hope appeals will be seen en France, people will spit them and phone in.

Fuckwit journalists are actually very useful when the police need information disseminated to the public

Apparently it isn't being reported in the French media at all. Not newsworthy across the Channel it seems.

I just hope she is found, the man must be seriously unhinged to kidnap one of his pupils

I dont think anyone at all disagrees that what this man has done is wrong. However I dont think he has kidnapped her - nothing has been reported that suggests he has kidnapped her and everything point to the fact shes gone of her own free will.

Regardless of her age teachers are not allowed relationships with their pupils for solid reasons, the same as Im a Nurse and Nurses are not allowed relationships with their patients. It is a gross abuse of trust and imbalances between someone in a position of professional responsibility and "power" over someone more vulnerable. He will (I assume) have had this drummed into him and again I assume he doesnt care in this case - he must think running off with her is worth it.

I agree with people who have said the investigation into an already suspected relationship will probably have been the tipping point and he has convinced this young girl that the only way they can possibly be together is to run away, all very romantic and all that, that no-one else will understand etc. Quite how he thinks he waa going to support the 2 of them in the real world is anyones guess. I would also hazard a guess that it wont be long before they are eitehr found or he gives himself up, not much comfort to her parents of course in the meantime.

Well currently the French have nothing to do to intervene in this case, other than informing UK authorities IF they are seen. Other than that there is null for them to do.

I remember going through the classic teenager schoolgirl crush on my English teacher.

Fortunately he was a nice man who was very kind to me but never overstepped the boundaries. I look back and think about how vulnerable I was- I had no wider experience of men which meant that he seemed wonderful, so sophisticated and knowledgable, so funny - when in fact he was just a very ordinary, but very nice and good at his job, person.

Exactly like me About I also had a crush on my maths teacher, so much so i used to eye him up and leave fruit polos on his desk. I also flirted with him and thought we would one day be married, thought at the time he liked me to
But that was when i was 15, i now look back and realise i had a very silly infatuation with him and unlike this teacher he did his job properly and was interested in women not young impressionable girls!

I bet maths teachers up and down the country are getting it in the neck this week.

Er pan you were the one who started saying people on this thread were in danger of being in contempt

I took it as read that we all understood that you couldn't possibly be in contempt if there was no active investigation and was explaining that even if the matter was prosecuted there was no contempt despite your assertions that discussing previous behaviour of the pair could amount to the same.

As for CPS deciding not to prosecute, of course they sometimes choose not to, either because of insufficient evidence or because despite there existing sufficient evidence it is not in the public interest to prosecute. It would be extraordinarily unlikely, and wholly inappropriate for a sex offender not to be prosecuted because the child he groomed would prefer he wasn't.

Sara - nooo..read the posts? I was suggesting that IF the H/M were to say much more then possibly he may be in contempt - you should have said "tosh, there is no active case" instead of the admissibility thing. I said absolutely nothing about 'people on this thread'.

re the 'not prosecuting thing', do please read stuff properly (again) - Ididn't say 'if the child preferred he wasn't prosecuted) he might not be. I mentioned 'the best interest of the victim' which isn't the same thing, at all.

good god this thread has gone beyond the realms of hysteria. talk of paedophiles and kidnap and suicide pacts and wondering whether she is dead or alive.

It is very easy to sit here and demonise this man by essentially turning him into a monster. But in truth we don't know what's gone on or what still might be going on. All we know is that he has left the country with this fifteen year old girl, and that as her teacher this is highly inappropriate and he should be held accountable once tway. hey return to the UK.

We don't know that he has been grooming her. We like to believe that he was, because this strengthens the hang the bastard argument. But it is possible that she made the first move and that he was completely stupid and reacted. It is possible that he believes he is in love with her, however inappropriate that is, falling in love with a young girl who looks older than her years isn't actually uncommon. If he was the predatory type I would imagine the papers would be full of women who have previously been in relationships with this man wanting to tell their stories, but they're not.

He had been writing about his moral dilemma on the internet, which seems an indication that this isn't his normal way.

To see and acknowledge the possibility of all that is not condoning his behavior. What he has done is wrong - he has abused his position of power and as I said earlier, should be held accountable. But equally I don't think that we need to be painting this man out to be a paedophile who is manipulating a young girl into committing suicide when there is absolutely no indication that this could be the case.

For all we know they may be planning to stay abroad until she is sixteen, at which point she will be legally consenting and they can return to the UK. And if she denies sexual intercourse before she was sixteen then other than losing his job he won't be legally accountable.

Just heard on the news the school was investigating before they ran away