To report a teacher for having an affair with a 16 year old girl 25 years ago?

[jesusperezwept]

The reason I ask is because said teacher is currently going through a misconduct hearing regarding inappropriate relations with another girl at a different school in the same decade as the "affair" at my school. This man is high up the food chain. I have no proof of the relationship, it was just common knowledge. Should I say something to the local council or say nothing?

You can't go and report something that you haven't even personal knowledge of. Especially since it is unlikely to do much good. The man already is in trouble.

If it was a pedophile being promoted to a position of power with no one knowing what he did, it might be worth finding a victim and getting them to report him, but just having heard the rumour isn't enough.

Many years ago when I was 16 there was some gossip that I was pregnant by some older man. I was in care at the time and when my period came I had to show the used pads to an adult every day to "prove" I wasn't.

Well, now, that does sound like something worth reporting.
Was that legal at the time? Force a girl to show someone her used pads?

I think I'd be inclined to report that there were rumours/it was common knowledge about the teacher and this girl then leave TPTB to follow it up or not as they saw fit.

These people men get away with this kind of behaviour when we all bury our heads in the sand and pretend it's not our problem. Have we not learned anything from Jimmy Savile et al?

Well, now, that does sound like something worth reporting.
Was that legal at the time? Force a girl to show someone her used pads

No-one cared about children in care in the 70s sadly. It was humiliating but I got off lightly compared to some of the other things that went on.

The problem with this though is that while morally it was questionable legally it wasn’t. So tbh I’m wondering what this hearing now would be about anyway given there was no law on it back then.....

All that being said, it’s entirely possible that if he was involved with the other girl she was totally willing and consenting at the time and doesn’t regret it.

We can probably all recall young women who got involved with men who were far older than they were and where it would be said that it was an abuse of power even if they didn’t have a professional involvement with them at the time. But many of these young girls went on to A, marry these men and b, didn’t regret having the relationships with them even if morally others would question them.

The fact that it was a teacher at the time doesn’t change that as the law didn’t make provision for teachers to be prosecuted in these circumstances any more than it now makes provision for other men not in a position of authority to be prosecuted iyswim.

In short, if two girls of the same age had relationships with two older men of the same age, but one was a teacher and one wasn’t, you would presumably not contact the girl whose partner wasn’t a teacher to tell her she should take action against him or you were going to tell the authorities, so why do it when that man happened to be a teacher back then given the law wasn’t in place at that time, other than because you’re vindictive.

I would nt contact the woman, she might not welcome the contact and it might distress her.

It was frowned upon back in the 60s but there wasn't legislation, each school dealt with it. I recall a 6th form girl in a relationship with a teacher, they subsequently married and she came to teach in the school too! I later taught with her in another school, she told me that the Head had been awful at the time but when she came to teach there it was like he'd forgotten all about it!

The position of trust laws only changed reasonably recently to include under 18s. Prior to that whilst it was morally questionable, if someone was over the age of consent then that was that.

I'm not sure how far you'd get essentially sharing rumours of something that wasn't illegal at the time.