Pupil who bragged about sex with his teacher ‘made it up to impress mates’
A teeNAGeR who allegedly had sex with his teacher in an aeroplane toilet was yesterday accused of lying about the encounter to impress his classmates.
the pupil – who was 16 at the time – told police he had sex with eleanor Wilson, then 26, on a British Airways flight back from a school trip to Swaziland in southern Africa.
the pair developed a ‘ clandestine relationship’ during the two-week outdoor activities trip in July and August 2015, Bristol Crown Court heard.
they were said to have stayed up late holding hands and chatting before having unprotected sex on the flight from Johannesburg to heathrow.
Wilson, 29, is accused of kissing, cuddling and holding hands with the pupil on three occasions after the trip.
the physics teacher, who was head of key stage four at a Bristol secondary school, is then said to have told him she was pregnant with his child and wanted an abortion.
But yesterday the pupil, who is now 19, was accused of making it all up.
Dismissing his claims as ‘fantasy’, defence barrister Anna Midgley said he spun a web of lies because he was ‘infatuated’ with the teacher. She also accused the teenager of lying when he said Wilson told him she was pregnant with his child. In fact, she had told him she was pregnant with her boyfriend’s baby, it was claimed.
Miss Midgley told him: ‘I suggest you did tell your friends these things, and that was part of your fantasy with Wilson.
‘You fantasised and boasted to your friends, and that got out, and rumours started. then someone started to blackmail her. So your parents and the school started questioning you... at that point, you couldn’t say none of this was true – at that point you were tied in into having to say you had sex on the plane because that is what you told people. It wasn’t true.’
Miss Midgley said sex would have been challenging in the cramped confines of the Airbus A380’s toilets. She also claimed Wilson was wearing jeans and sturdy hiking books, meaning her clothing could not have been removed in the way the pupil described.
the pupil, who cannot be named for legal reasons, denied lying about the encounters. he said Wilson was wearing ‘zip- off’ hiking trousers which are easily removable, and there was enough room for them to have intercourse.
Giving evidence behind a screen, he admitted developing a ‘physical attraction’ to his teacher during the Swaziland trip, where she encouraged him to open up about his struggles with his girlfriend. the teenager said he was comfortable with their relationship until she summoned him to her office and told him she was pregnant.
Prosecutor Virginia Cornwall showed jurors a long note the boy had written on his phone about the abortion. It read: ‘Did you want me to have no choice to kill my own child? Why are you trying to f***ing kill me? You took my happiness, you took my dream, you took my confidence? those times on the grass in the summer laughing... kissing, touching me, telling me you love me.
‘Why are you doing this to me? Why did I let this 26-year- old woman f*** with my head?’ Police did not find any other conversations between the boy and Wilson on his phone.
Yesterday the headteacher of the school said she brought Wilson in for a meeting about the claims. She told the court: ‘She was shocked and in a state of disbelief. It was a categorical denial.’
Wilson, of Dursley, Gloucestershire, denies four charges of sexual activity with a child by a person in a position of trust.
the trial continues.