Teacher lover feared I might kill myself, schoolgirl tells court

The girl was 15 when she started a relationship with Jeremy Forrest, 30, after developing a crush on him at Bishop Bell C of E School in Eastbourne, East Sussex.

Fearing they were about to be exposed, Forrest booked them on a cross-Channel ferry from Dover to Calais on September 20 last year before spending seven days on the run in France.

The girl, now aged 16, said she had been experiencing personal problems in the months up to the relationship with Forrest. This included her mother going through a divorce and then falling pregnant with a new partner.

The court heard the pair agreed to go to France after the girl had her phone seized by police investigating rumours of a relationship.

The girl said she planned to run away but Forrest agreed to come with her to prevent her from getting into danger.

She said: “He tried to persuade me not to run away.”

She added: “I said I was going and nobody was going to stop me. He was concerned that if I went on my own I would be in danger, it would be a better idea if he came with me. I was very pleased.”

When asked if she felt suicidal by defence counsel Ronald Jaffa, the girl, who chose to give her evidence in court for the first time rather than by videolink, said: “Yes”.

The girl told the court that Forrest, who she said was in tears as they drove to France, repeatedly asked her to return home but she refused.

A close friend of the girl said Forrest would send the youngster sexually explicit text messages and they would have “multiple” sex sessions.

The friend, speaking in a video-recorded police interview, said the messages started off with Forrest sending compliments such as “You’re beautiful”.

The friend, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said: “There were some sexual ones; they were quite graphic things, it’s really like cringy stuff.”

She said she first saw them kiss outside school. The girl would meet Forrest in her school uniform and they would have sex in his car. She said the girl had also disclosed they had had unprotected sex.

Forrest, of Chislehurst Road, Petts Wood, Kent, denies child abduction. The trial continues.