Teacher who fled with girl may face jail again
Former pupil admits she contacted him after seeing his name on Facebook as a ‘suggested friend’
A TEACHER jailed in 2013 for abducting a 15-year-old schoolgirl and fleeing with her to France may have breached the terms of his licence by being in contact with her, it has emerged.
The girl, who travelled to Bordeaux with Jeremy Forrest after their affair was discovered by his colleagues, has said he responded to her after she contacted him on Facebook last year.
When Forrest was released from prison on licence last July, after serving two years of a five-and-a-half year sentence, he was ordered not to contact the girl.
However, Gemma Grant – the pseudonym the girl chose to use when the pair absconded to Bordeaux – has now admitted that she spoke to Forrest last year when he would still have been under licence. The contact came after she messaged his Facebook account, which had come up on hers as a “suggested friend”.
She says Forrest sounded happy and told her he had a new girlfriend.
The admission means probation service officials may now investigate whether Forrest breached the terms of his licence by being in contact with Miss Grant, even though he did not instigate it, and whether he should be returned to prison as a result.
In an article written for Cosmopolitan magazine and published yesterday, Miss Grant, now nearly 20, says: “Since Jeremy’s release from prison, we have only spoken once, about a year ago, after I messaged a Facebook account with his name that came up as a suggested friend.”
The Ministry of Justice, which is responsible for the National Probation Service, said it could not comment on individual cases.
Miss Grant admits her affair with Jeremy Forrest was a “dangerous infatuation”, but says she does not regard herself as his victim. She says: “Do I regret my relationship with Jeremy? I can’t say I do, but I now recognise it for what it was: a dangerous infatuation. One that cost both of us dearly.”
Forrest was jailed in 2013 after being found guilty of child abduction and pleading guilty to five further charges of sexual activity with a child. At his trial, Forrest, then aged 30, was described by Judge Michael Lawson QC as being motivated by self-interest and was told he had hurt and damaged everyone around him in his determination to abuse the 15-year-old and evade justice.
But writing in Cosmopolitan, Miss Grant says: “Back in England, “groomer” and “paedophile” were the words I kept hearing. [I] questioned whether I was the victim people had made me out to be. I’m still asking myself that now. All I know is, at the time, it didn’t feel that way.”