Bosses ‘warned teacher to stay away from pupil’

Neil Pittman, who was head of upper school at Bishop Bell C of E School in Eastbourne, Sussex, told Lewes Crown Court yesterday he approached Jeremy Forrest, 30, about the rumours the girl had “a crush” on him and he replied that he knew.

“His reaction was that he had heard,” he said. “He wasn’t completely surprised. I offered him some advice.

“One was to keep a distance from the pupil by not being too friendly, too familiar. I told him that would be a sensible thing to do. And the second thing I advised was to keep it out in the open, to talk about it to his senior staff. In other words, to say that he was aware of what was being heard and said. He seemed to think it was a good idea.”

At a later point, Mr Pittman said he spotted Forrest engaged in “jovial conversation” with the girl at the school gate, despite his earlier advice to keep his distance.

The school’s deputy headteacher, Mark Talbot, met Forrest on March 30 – six months before the elopement – amid further concerns he was not heeding advice to steer clear of the teenager.

Mr Talbot spoke to Forrest about the gossip and told him to make sure he was not alone with the girl to avoid putting himself in a vulnerable position, and to keep his door open.

He said: “He seemed frustrated that the rumours were going around but he seemed very clear to me that there was nothing going on, in his words.”

Mr Talbot added: “He was frustrated by the fact that I was having the conversation with him because other people had previously had the conversation with him. He seemed clear about what I was saying in terms of the guidance and I was reassured by what he was saying to me, that he was very clear of his professional boundaries and what he needed to follow.”

Lewes Crown Court was also told yesterday that police halted their inquiries into claims of a relationship between Forrest and the girl – who cannot be named for legal reasons – hours before they fled to France.

Officers seized the schoolgirl’s mobile phone five days after receiving a tip-off that Forrest had sent her intimate pictures to it.

Jurors were told that the day after the girl’s phone was taken away, an officer spoke to a teacher at the school on September 20 saying there was “no evidence” on it.

Alicja Bobela, the assistant head with responsibilities for child protection matters, said: “They were not going to seize Jeremy’s phone. So we were left with the idea that we had to follow up the investigation.”

Soon afterwards, Forrest booked cross-Channel ferry tickets for him and the girl under his and his wife’s names before the pair boarded the Spirit of France hand in hand.

Forrest, of Petts Wood, Kent, denies child abduction.

The trial continues.