Teacher smuggled schoolgirl in boot for sex

A PERVERT teacher put a schoolgirl in the boot of his car to smuggle her into his marital home for sex, a disciplinary tribunal ruled yesterday.

Stephen Fretwell, now 59, had a five-year relationship with the “vulnerable” victim after grooming her from the age of 14.

He bedded the girl and videoed their sex session while his wife, a PE teacher at another school, was out. Fretwell also photographed her naked and performing indecent acts.

The girl, Witness A, was not a pupil of Fretwell’s, who has worked at schools in Norfolk and Worcs, but met him through his wife’s hockey club.

Two years ago Fretwell was cleared of 30 sex offences allegedly committed with the girl more than three decades ago after a jury returned not guilty verdicts after a trial at Worcester Crown Court.

He denied he had seduced and groomed the girl, now in her 40s, when he was teaching in Droitwich in the 1980s.

But a panel of the National College for Teaching and Leadership in Coventry described her as an “honest and credible witness”. It found Fretwell guilty of unacceptable professional conduct that may bring the profession into disrepute.

The panel ruled he had intercourse with her from the age of 14. Although retired from Norfolk County Council where he was a supply teacher, it banned him from the classroom for life.

Fretwell, of Erpingham, Norwich, claimed sex only began after she passed her 16th birthday – the age of consent.