BREAKING NEWS: Married teacher Jeremy Forrest found GUILTY of abducting his schoolgirl lover, 15, and fleeing with her to France
Guilty: Jeremy Forrest is led into court in handcuffs today before the jury found him guilty of abducting a schoolgirl
Jeremy Forrest was today found guilty
of abducting his 15-year-old schoolgirl lover after taking her on the
run for eight days in France.
The jury at Lewes Crown Court took
less than two hours to find him guilty of one charge of child
abduction, and the disgraced 30-year-old now faces jail.
They refused to accept his defence that the teenager was 'desperate and suicidal' and he went with her to the continent to prevent her coming to harm.
He was labelled a 'paedophile' by the
prosecution, who said he 'groomed' the vulnerable teenager and his
actions were a gross breach of trust.
Their fling came after the teenager had developed a crush on him at Bishop Bell C of E School in Eastbourne,
East Sussex, where he taught maths.
Married
Forrest then persistently seduced the child in her school uniform,
first kissing her in a classroom and within weeks had told her: 'I love
you', his victim said.
The
keen singer, who performed under the name Jeremy Ayre, also wrote songs
about their relationship and even wrote a blogpost about his 'moral
dilemma' - a likely reference to their relationship - under the title
'you hit me just like heroin' in May last year.
Over
the next four months they had sex in his car, home and at hotels,
sometimes up to eight times a night, and often without contraception,
before the 30-year-old took the teenager to France in September last
year.
Forrest had abducted the girl when he feared the school and the police were on to them.
They
fled Britain on a cross-Channel ferry from Dover, sparking a
Europe-wide search involving Interpol that ended eight days later.
Their disappearance sparked several television appeals by their parents as well as a reconstruction on Crimewatch.
After
dumping his car in Paris, they travelled by train to Bordeaux,
south-west France, and checked into a small hotel. They also dyed their
hair to avoid being recognised.
In an attempt to find work, Forrest had written a bogus CV and said
he was called Jack Francis Dean.
It made no mention of his teaching
experience, stating instead that he was a journalism graduate who had
worked for music magazine NME. The girl also changed her name and also fabricated a CV to try to get work.
But
when Forrest appeared at an English bar in the city, the owner
instantly recognised him from online news reports, and contacted Sussex
police.
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Betrayal: Married maths teacher Forrest, 30,
wrote songs about the girl under his performing name Jeremy Ayre and
also wrote of a 'moral dilemma' on his blog while they had an affair
On the run: Fearing they had been rumbled Forrest drove the girl in his black Ford Fiesta to Dover to cross the Channel
They were captured by French police as they walked hand-in-hand through Bordeaux, and had spent eight days on the run.
Famous: This picture from the ferry's CCTV showed the maths teacher cuddling the girl, seemingly without a care in the world
They had been staying in a room in the city, with a room containing little more than a single bed and a TV.
After she was rescued and he was sent back to Britain, his crime sparked this abduction trial.
The couple had not seen each other since they were
found, but smiled at each other across the courtroom as the teenager,
now 16, took to the witness box this week to explain what happened.
Forrest had refused to give evidence.
She told the jury that before the pair fled she had felt suicidal, fearing their relationship was about to be exposed.
A day earlier police had confiscated
her phone after being tipped off as rumours of the relationship swirled
around Bishop Bell C of E School.
The girl, who cannot be named for
legal reasons, said Forrest tried to ‘persuade me not to run away’ and
only came with her because she was ‘insistent’ and he feared for her
safety.
She said that as Forrest drove
her to Dover to board a cross-channel ferry to Calais he seemed ‘very
worried and very emotional’.
She said: ‘I don’t think he wanted to take me anywhere. I was insistent.
‘I was very determined and once I had
an idea in my head nobody was going to stop me, not Jeremy, not
anybody. I was adamant we had to go otherwise I feared what would
happen.’
Forrest was aware she had suffered from an eating disorder, self-harming and was having problems at home, the court heard.
The teenager said: ‘He was concerned
that if I went on my own I would be in danger so he said it would be a
better idea if he came with me.
'I was very pleased. If Jeremy said he was not coming with me I dread to think what situation I would be in then.
‘He said to me, “this isn’t going to
end very well but if you are insisting things could happen to you as a
result we have to go”.’
Daily Mail
Posted by Editor
on 16:48.
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