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.

It is illegal to have an under 18 spend the night with you unless they have permission from their parents, so it may well be the correct term.

Thats also not true. I lived alone at 17, I was legally quite free to stay wherever I wanted without any parental permission.

Meanwhile this thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/in_the_news/1572109-Abuse-of-hundreds-of-girls-as-young-as-ten-covered-up-by-police-and-social-services
hasn't even got to 50 posts.
Maybe this story is just more voyeuristically appealing

I think that is very harsh, Skippy. Most posters on this thread are not voyeuristically relishing the story. And I for one am avoiding threads like the one you linked to as too triggering for me at the moment.

Sorry, slight error, statutory rape applies to under 13s in UK

How awful for his wife and child.

If this 15 year old were my daughter; I'd actually prefer it that she were with a 30 year old who can presumably look after her, than another 15 year old who could not.

I know that's not really the issue, but what's happened has happened and they won't be coming back until they are forced to or decide for themselves that they will. I think she will return home - he will not. This was planned and he knows the trouble he would face were he to return home, he's not stupid.

Just to clarify the law:

What happens if you have underage sex? (The age of consent is 16.)
The law sees it as sexual assault - it's a criminal offence. This is because in the eyes of the law we are unable to give informed consent to sex when still a child.

A boy/man who has sex with a girl under 16 (17 in NI) is breaking the law. Even if she agrees.
If she is 13-15, the boy/man could go to prison for two years.
If she is under 13 he could be sentenced to life imprisonment.
A girl/woman age 16 or over who has sex with a boy under 16 can be prosecuted for indecent assault.

Again, a 13, 14 or 15 year old can consent to sex. However the person who has sex with her will usually commit the crime of unlawful sexual intercourse.

This is not 'sexual assault', which has specific meaning, of non-consensual intentional sexual touching.

It is a sexual offence, as is say downloading child pornography, but that doesn't make it sexual assault.

and just a bit more on the law:

So, once you're 16 it's OK to have sex?
It's legal, except with someone who's in a 'position of trust' over us. This includes teachers, carers and doctors, who we trust to look after us. It's illegal for them to have sex with under-18s in their care.

why does everyone keep falling sorry for his child when he doesn't have one.

Just shows no one really reads anything properly and just wants to join in with the pearl clutching

Pearl clutching? This is just a gossip thread, no? I mean, it's not like it's serving any useful purpose...

I don't get why you all think she is so innocent. I remember very clearly being 25 and the other girls in my year. If there had been an attractive young teacher we would have been flirting with him, being totally inappropriate and some of the girls would have done everything they could to get his attention. He is a stupid man for cheating on his wife and risking everything for a relationship he must have known was doomed and illegal... but I very much doubt he was the one to start it and if she is like most 15year olds, she knew precisely what she was doing. If she were my daughter, I would be just as mad at her as at him.

15 - not 25.

flyingspaghetti You are talking absolute bollocks. I sincerely hope you don't have any daughters.

I am most surprised at the amount of people in rl who believe this girl is somehow responsible for what has happened. She has been groomed, no other way of putting it is there?

Irrelevant flyingspeghettimonster. He was the adult, the teacher, in loco parentis. It is common for adolescent girls to have a crush on teachers, or flirt with them, the teacher has to handle it in a mature, safe way. I know one teacher who couldn't cope with the attention in an all girl's school and he did the sensible thing and got a job elsewhere.

"It is illegal to have an under 18 spend the night with you unless they have permission from their parents, so it may well be the correct term.". what rubbish.

MrsF, she is not responsible - but that doesn't necessarily mean she was groomed.

He has committed statutory rape and there will be an arrest warrant as he wore blue socks on the ferry last Friday.

If you swallow chewing gum, it blocks your heart and you die.

Flying She is 15, he is 30-It isn't her fault by law she is a child and he was a figure of trust aswell as being 15 years her senior.
The girl is clouded, even if she started it the teacher is the person at fault here not the 15yo.
We all had crushes when growing up, tje difference is my teacher wasn't perveted.

Any point of view is based on how mature we view 15 years olds. Some seem to still view them as children which they are imo not. Afterall we expect them to be making some pretty important choices at 14 when they choose their options at school.
From comments on her blog about wanting the next year to be over would indicate they were trying to keep things quite until she had finished at the school and it is the reporting of their relationship that has most probably been the deciding factor in their flight to france and beyond.
There could be many reasons or ways their relationship started but no matter the reasons behind it all he should have waited until she had left the school but you cannot say he has groomed her or is some sort of sexual preditor as no one knows the facts and comment like those are going to just make them run further and faster away.

you cannot say he has groomed her or is some sort of sexual preditor

Actually I think you'll find it's quite easy to say those things.

but we don't actually know that she has been groomed. Let's take him out of the equasion for a second.

As flying said above, there are many fifteen year olds who are anything but innocent and who would flirt shamelessly with a teacher they may have a crush on. There are plenty of examples given on this thread of teachers who have moved jobs/kept out of the way of students who were making inappropriate advances towards them.

People are saying this girl is innocent based on the fact that this man didn't resist any relationship with her. But the fact is we don't know who made the first move. That he didn't walk away makes him guilty of having an inappropriate relationship with her, that's not in question. But what iHe shouldn't have responded and f he had. What if she was the one to have made the first move and he had walked away? Would she still be innocent then? If it were your fifteen year old making inappropriate advances towards a teacher would you consider her innocent? or would you come down hard on her?

It's easy to say that she was groomed because that is the position we like to take. But in truth we don't know. She may have made the first advances. It's not uncommon for young naive girls to do that. No, he shouldn't have responded and yes, he should be held accountable for doing so. But I think it's disingenuous to suggest that everything will have come from him initially when that might not actually be the case.

Panof - do we know that they have had sex?

Umm, no, people are saying she's 'innocent' because she's a 15 year old girl who has been taken advantge of a by a 30 year old in a position of trust.

Whether she initiated the flirting or not is absolutely irrelevant. He didn't discourage it. He has clearly encouraged it which could of course be seen as grooming.