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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

To think a 15 year old CANNOT be "in a relationship" with a 30 year old man.

131 replies

MissJayTea · 26/09/2012 11:02

She is under the age of consent.

He has groomed, manipulated and abused her.

They are NOT in a relationship. He is a grown man and she is a child. He is a paedophile and she is his victim!

Even the bbc news referred to them as being in a relationship.

OP posts:

frumpet · 26/09/2012 13:23

Do we know for sure that they have had sex ? If he waits until she is 16 , then although he will get sacked , it wont be illegal . I wonder when she turns 16 ?

ConferencePear · 26/09/2012 13:50

These events are wrong on so many levels that I'm not surprised it has made the news.
This girl is presumably in Year 11 and so should be doing her exams next summer. There is little realistic chance that this will happen now.
The teacher has behaved in a completely unprofessional way. If this relationship had happened in any school I've ever worked in the teacher would have been suspended while investigations were undertaken and the parents would definitely have been informed.
According to one report their mobiles were confiscated by the police last week. It looks very much as if they have run away to save him from prosecution.

fedupofnamechanging · 26/09/2012 13:55

OldCatLady, the problem here is that this girl should be at home, doing her GCSE's. So for a start, he has fucked up her education.

Secondly, he's her teacher. There is no way for his position to not influence her. He has abused a great deal of trust that's been placed in him.

At 15 she does not have the emotional maturity to fully judge what is best for her, in the long run.

If he truly loved her, he would have left her alone until she was 18 and not longer in his care as a pupil. Or at the very least, left his job, so he wouldn't be in a position of power and influence over her.

TeeBee · 26/09/2012 13:59

Once he's in prison, there won't be any differentiation of his treatment whether he is deemed a sex offender/statuatory rapist/paedophile.

WicketyPitch · 26/09/2012 14:08

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

PostBellumBugsy · 26/09/2012 14:14

If we remove the fact that he was a teacher at her school, then yes I think it is possible for a 30 year old man & a 15 year old girl to be "in a relationship".

Some girls at 15 are simplistic souls easily manipulated & some are very savvy, emotionally mature who could run rings around silly men.

The issue for me here, is that a teacher should not abuse the trust placed in him or her by the school, local authority, parents & the children themselves by having any kind of inappropriate relationship with a pupil.

squeakytoy · 26/09/2012 14:20

"He should have resigned, gone to work elsewhere, left his marriage and then waited until she was 16 to carry anything on.. but we dont know how much the 15yr old was involved in any decision making here."

This may have been the long term plan, but they got caught too early and ran away rather than him face the music.

Sending him to prison will not help this, no matter how much some people feel he should be locked up. She believes she loves him, she will want to wait for him, and once he has served a sentence, if it ever gets that far, she will be with him again and there will be nothing that anyone can do about it either.

OneMoreChap · 26/09/2012 14:24

PostBellumBugsy Top quality post!
Fully agree.

corlan · 26/09/2012 14:32

Before I worked in a school I used to agree with the view that some 15 year olds were very mature and would know exactly what they were doing in a situation like this.

I've worked with secondary age children for over 10 years and I now know that is complete rubbish.

There is not one 15 or 16 year old girl (or boy ) at my school,however streetwise or however mature she thinks she is, that could not be manipulated by an adult. It is as simple as that.

Fobwatch · 26/09/2012 14:38

I think the problem is very complex here.

We can probably all think of relationships between teenage girls and older men which worked out, they got married, had children, totally romantic story. The age gap is not the issue.

Nor is the fact that she is under the legal age of consent. We all know if she had been 16 and one day, it would not be illegal for her to engage in sex with an older man.

There are lots of grey areas in this story which lead some people to refer to them as "in a relationship"....her age, the fact that she is "willing" and probably madly in love with him, that she does not consider herself a child etc.

But the fact that:

there is a significant age gap
she is legally underage
he was in a position of trust as her teacher so it is illegal whatever her age
he was married with children
he may have known her for some years when she was well under the age of consent
he has clearly encouraged her to lie to her parents and others
he is engaged in an intense relationship with her when she is vulnerable and should be focusing on exams

In concert, these individual issues make it impossible for him not to have known this was no romantic, coup de foudre, love story. He knew it was wrong and he is culpable.

But he is not a paedophile and the OP does victims of true paedophiles a huge disservice when she describes him in her OP as such and in very inflamatory terms ("she is a child" etc.) The trouble is that when men such as this are referred to as paedophiles, it clouds the issues around real paedophilia.

LeBFG · 26/09/2012 14:41

As he's clearly not a paedophile, I am getting really annoyed by all this 'grooming' talk in the press. I've only ever seen the word in reference to peadophiles so can only conlcude the press want to beef the story up into something more than it is.

To add my h'penny, when I was at school, and indeed when I went back to teach there in 2003, there were teachers having affairs with pupils. One ageing HoY had a string. Even the HT knew of what was going on but turned a blind eye. The next school I teaught at, the HoY and dep HT were fighting to give special 'individual' A-level lessons to a, ahem, very well developed and very attractive 17yo girl. This was played out in front of my A-level class one day. I was pretty shocked - both men were married.

So, I reckon this sort of thing is rife in schools and the management in schools play it down, heavily. Whether that makes it right...another question I suppose. The main, and probably only, problem I see with this is the abuse of a position of power/confidence. We don't expect to get jiggy with our doctors or vicars for example. But with lecturers at uni, I feel this distance is often not prominent or even expected in the modern world, so would be less inclined to frown on pupil/lecturer relationship.

The secondary question is of course age gap, but then others have commented on this - they work or don't. She's not too young for a relationship - girls of 15 are getting married around the world and having children. I also don't agree that because older men are more often abusers means this teacher has an abusive relationship with the girl. The fact he's prepared to loose everything for her is testament to his devotion, isn't it?

pumpkinsweetie · 26/09/2012 14:41

Yanbu-it isn't a 'relationship', it's a teen having a crush on a much older man (normal) & a predator that of which is a 30yo school teacher taking advantage of what is just a normal crush.
If this has been going on 7m or more she would have been more like 14 when it started.

Teapot13 · 26/09/2012 14:41

I am still working my way through this thread, but I notice a lot of posters saying that no one knows whether this child was actually "groomed" by the teacher or not -- and go on to cite examples of girls they knew who had the hots for older men and pursued them vigorously.

This is indisputably true, and it is not relevant to this discussion. The fact that girls this age often take a fancy to a much older man is one of the reasons we have laws against this behavior -- we, as a society, take the view that these young girls are not mature enough to give meaningful consent, and sex without consent is a crime. Some jurisdictions (including mine) call it statutory rape, some call it by another name.

Tamoo · 26/09/2012 14:54

Did anyone click on the link to his blog in the other thread? He seems a bit juvenile himself. Eg that "hit like heroin" thing, it's cringeworthy. Also his musings on moral dilemmas and how it essentially doesn't matter what path you choose as long as you're happy when you look in the mirror. It doesn't seem like the thinking of a grown man with responsibilities who is in a particular position of trust and authority and whose job it is to provide guidance to the young.

autumnlights12 · 26/09/2012 15:02

have you got a link to the blog, I can't find it?

quoteunquote · 26/09/2012 15:02

Ask yourself if it isn't wrong why are they on the run?

Of course he is a manipulative shit, who is taking advantage of someone who he should be help protect from poor life choices.

They are probable in Asia, south America, or north Africa by now, where money goes further.

Jins · 26/09/2012 15:07

How is 'relationship' defined?

From the reports of their correspondence on twitter etc and the fact that the police have apparently confiscated their phones It would seem very much that this 15yo IS "in a relationship" with a 30yo man.

Should she be? Absolutely not. His behaviour is absolutely unacceptable. He doesn't have the excuse of 'thinking she was older' as he knows very well how old she is through his position at school.

Tamoo · 26/09/2012 15:11

Someone's linked to it on the bottom of page 9 of the other thread (sorry can't do links myself). Haven't checked to see if it's still up though.

Cadmum · 26/09/2012 15:18

Dh's 14 year old niece ran off wih a 30 year old man and SS and the police did surprisingly little to intervene. Nothing surprises me anymore in this type of relationship but it does break my heart. I remember thinking that I knew everything at 15. Thank heavens no man took advantage of this fact...

frumpet · 26/09/2012 15:20

Exactly quoteunquote , if there was nothing wrong with the situation , we would all be slagging him off for going away durung term time instead !

DiscretionGuaranteed · 26/09/2012 15:58

Don't see the problem with the word "relationship" myself - all sorts of people are in vile/abusive/unequal/illegal/generally fucked up relationships.

IPredictADiet · 26/09/2012 16:06

he can be prosecuted for unlawful sexual activity with a child, even if there is a lack of evidence to support a rape charge
grooming itself is against the Sexual Offences Act IIRC.

LesleyPumpshaft · 26/09/2012 16:09

A friend of mine when we were 15 went through a phase of having 'relationships' with men in her 30's. Once she got older and understood the abusiveness of it, it really messed with her head.

KillerRack · 26/09/2012 16:14

He is all kinds of wrong , but not a paedophile.

people throw that word around with no real understanding of it. a pre pubescent 15 year old would indeed be a rarity.

quietlysuggests · 26/09/2012 16:27

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

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