Teacher avoids jail after affair with pupil

A TEACHER in France was handed a suspended prison sentence yesterday for sleeping with a 14-year-old pupil as the country grapples with changing the law on underage sex.

The relatively lenient verdict – the prosecutor had asked for a jail term of five years with two suspended – came two days after President Emmanuel Macron called for cases where adults have sex with a child under 15 to be considered rape.

Lawyers for the girl’s family had called for more time for a fresh investigation, saying that police had failed to grasp the gravity of the case, treating it as a “simple love affair”.

The teacher and the pupil, who was in his class last year, started chatting on Instagram in February before beginning a relationship in June. The girl insisted that they were in love, but when her stepfather found out how old her “boyfriend” was, he dragged the teacher to the police station and the family accused him of being a sexual predator.

The teacher was placed on probation for two years, was ordered to attend counselling and was banned from working with minors or contacting the girl.

The government has promised legal reform after uproar over rulings this autumn in which two 11-yearold girls were deemed not to have been raped by much older men because they had apparently agreed to sex.