Teacher ‘had sex with pupil in plane toilet – then said she was pregnant’
A PHYSICS teacher had sex with a 16-year-old pupil in the toilets of an aeroplane before telling him she was pregnant and wanted an abortion, a court heard.
Eleanor Wilson, 29, struck up a ‘clandestine relationship’ with the sixthformer during a school trip to Swaziland, southern Africa, jurors were told.
The pair spent much of the outdoor activities trip holding hands and swapping intimate secrets before having unprotected sex on their British Airways flight home from Johannesburg, it is claimed.
The teenager, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said students and teachers alike had been enjoying free alcohol on the boozy night flight to Heathrow.
He said he was ‘fairly intoxicated’ when Wilson clutched his hand, kissed him on the cheek and slid her hands down his boxer shorts. The schoolboy told police in an interview played to jurors: ‘I was excited. I was like, “OK this is happening, that’s fine”. There wasn’t any doubt in my mind that I would not do it. I was happy with what she was doing.’
Wilson, who was head of Key Stage 4 at her Bristol secondary school, is then said to have got up and beckoned the boy into a toilet on the Airbus A380 aircraft.
The pupil told police 6ft 2in Wilson locked the door of the cramped cubicle before pinning him against the wall and performing a sex act on him. They are then said to have had full, unprotected intercourse as teachers and pupils dozed outside.
Afterwards, the boy slipped out of the toilet, followed moments later by Wilson. The pair crept back to their seats, where another pupil watched them intertwine their legs.
The teenager, now 19, told police: ‘I was feeling good, very shocked, I didn’t really believe it was true – that I’d just had sex with my teacher. I enjoyed it.’
When term resumed, the pupil said Wilson, who had a boyfriend, summoned him to her office to reveal she was pregnant with his child and had booked an abortion.
The boy said: ‘She told me she was scared and didn’t know what to do. It was a really big thing for me. She was very upset about it. I asked her, “Are you sure this is my baby?” She said, “Yes – me and my boyfriend haven’t had sex since the Swaziland trip.”’
The pair had swapped numbers on the coach from Heathrow back to Bristol following the trip in August 2015, and spent the rest of the summer holidays meeting up.
Opening the case at Bristol Crown Court yesterday, Virginia Cornwall, prosecuting, described Wilson as ‘a bright and capable’ teacher but a serial ‘risk-taker’.
A ‘bond’ developed between the boy and the then 26-yearold which led to an ‘erosion of boundaries’, Mrs Cornwall said. They began exchanging ‘intense’ text messages, which have since been deleted. A week after the trip, Wilson and the boy went to a Nando’s restaurant to reunite with other members of the Swaziland camping trip, where he bought her a bunch of flowers and chocolates. Wilson gave him a lift home and he showed her to his bedroom, where it is claimed they kissed.
They also enjoyed day trips to Tintern Abbey in Monmouthshire and Ashton Court Estate in Bristol, where she confided in him over pub meals and cider about the difficulties she faced with her boyfriend. There was more kissing and sexual contact on those occasions, the court heard.
By this time, Wilson convinced the pupil to split up with his girlfriend and his father noticed he was talking ‘incessantly’ about the teacher. The teenager had Wilson saved as ‘Smurfette’ in his phone to avoid arousing suspicion and was told to delete their text messages, the court heard.
He told police they had sex only once, on the plane, and on other occasions only kissed. The alleged affair was exposed when a friend of the pupil who knew about their relationship tried to blackmail Wilson into having sex with him.
Wilson tried to deal with the situation herself but ended up reporting the threat to the deputy headteacher in Febru- ary 2016 and resigned from her job. The school opened an investigation into her in the spring of that year and interviewed the boy’s father.
Police were eventually brought in, but Wilson branded allegations of sexual contact between them as ‘pure fantasy’. She denies four counts of sexual activity with a child by a person in a position of trust. She does admit talking to the schoolboy and giving him the occasional lift.
But Mrs Cornwall told the court: ‘She is a woman with a different side to her. She was a woman who was having a clandestine relationship with a 16-year-old pupil.’
The trial, which is expected to last all week, continues.
‘Are you sure this is my baby?’ ‘Clandestine relationship’