Teacher at top school: I was scared I’d got my ex-pupil, 18, pregnant

A TEACHER at a top private school feared he had got a teenage former pupil pregnant, an inquiry has heard.

The ex-staff member of Loretto School revealed how the affair began in the summer holidays after the student left sixth form.

The teacher, who cannot be named for legal reasons, gave evidence at the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry yesterday.

He admitted giving his 18year-old lover the school’s pass codes so they could meet up during the summer break to have sex on the campus in Musselburgh, East Lothian.

The inquiry heard how the couple had become close during the girl’s final years of school, with the pupil sending flirtatious emails calling her teacher ‘hot’.

He said he asked her to stop sending the messages but admitted he had failed to report the inappropriate contact. The teacher told the inquiry: ‘I didn’t do what I should have done, which is go to the head teacher or child protection officer and declare it.’

He denied a suggestion by John Brown, QC, that this was because he was interested in the girl.

On her leaving school, the two began a sexual relationship, with a pregnancy ‘scare’ happening a few months later.

Eventually, the affair became the subject of an investigation and the inquiry was read texts in which the teacher encouraged the girl to keep a ‘cool head’ and not expose the relationship.

Mr Brown read aloud a message from the teacher in which he said: ‘There is nothing to answer is the best way forward. Late-night texting is the only evidence and that shows nothing but foolishness.’

The teacher maintained this was not due to fear over any criminal implications, but anxiety over his wife discovering the affair.

He said: ‘I was worried about the whole thing coming out in terms of my wife and my children, and that was my overriding fear.

‘I wasn’t trying to cover up. I became increasingly anxious about the whole idea this was going to become public.

‘I had no sense that there was any complaint to be made or that she was going to make, or that any wrongdoing that would be of interest to the police had taken place, so I did say just speak to them.’

A police investigation concluded that ‘no crime had been committed’ but the teacher was sacked from his post for gross misconduct.

Another former pupil alleged the teacher ‘targeted’ a different individual every year and ‘took advantage’ of schoolgirl crushes.

The pupil said the teacher styled himself as ‘cool’, blurring the lines between him and his students – claims which the teacher denied.

The inquiry also heard how he had been subjected to disciplinary action some years previously after getting drunk at a sixth-form ball.

He allegedly patted female students on the bottom and asked one girl to ‘relieve him’. The teacher said he could not recall his behaviour on the night due to his intoxication.

The inquiry heard too that the teacher had been reprimanded for recurrent absences from lessons which often resulted in classes being left unattended.

The inquiry continues.