Schoolteachers who have been up to no good must come up before the beak hundreds of times a year. So why is it that the story always get so much attention when those involved are a young female teacher and a teenage boy – for example in today’s and yesterday’s Times?
It couldn’t be prurience, could it?
The offences took place in the late 1980s at Christ’s College, Finchley. The offender, a woman called Sally-Anne Bowen, was in her mid-twenties. Photographs from the time – I’ve searched so you don’t have to – indicate that she was very attractive.
The boys were 14 or 15. One of them said he had sex with her “about twenty or thirty times”. He did not deny enjoying “the sex, the games and secrets”, but said: “For me it was the destruction of my education.”
In what way? How much more destructive was it than all the other foolish, unwise and / or criminal things teenage boys get up to?
And why did he keep coming back for more? And why did it take him almost 40 years to complain?
I am / was not a fly on the wall in the courtroom or in the relevant bedroom, but nonetheless I would suggest that if Ms Bowen – who is now 65 – goes to jail it will be a travesty.
Of course in such cases a teacher should be sacked if the pupil complains, and be banned from teaching for life. But that is sufficient punishment.
