My teacher groomed me and assaulted me daily in his classroom – it sickens me sex abuse in schools is higher than ever
LEAVING the classroom after a lesson, Sophie Webster* was horrified when she felt a hand sweep across her bottom.
But this wasn't a teenage boy with a crush who was overstepping the mark.
It was actually one of Sophie's school teachers - a man in his late twenties and in a position of power. Someone she thought she could trust and had once admired.
Shockingly, what happened to Sophie, then 14, is becoming more commonplace.
Earlier this week, disgraced teacher Kandice Barber, 38, was handed a lifetime teaching ban for having sex with a 15-year-old pupil.
The decision came three years after the teacher was sentenced to six years in prison for grooming the teenager, sending him X-rated photos and having sex with him in a field - acts which a Judge described as “despicable”.
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Her ex-husband Daniel, 41, has welcomed the Teaching Regulation Agency’s (TRA) decision to bar Barber, who worked in Princes Risborough, Bucks., from the profession, saying that she “devastated so many lives.”
revealed the number of teachers banned for life over sexual misconduct allegations has surged sixfold in the wake of the pandemic. Numbers are reportedly the highest they've been since the TRA started to record the statistics five years ago.
Altogether, 108 teachers across England were issued with lifetime teaching bans in 2022 alone.
And Sophie knows all too well the damaging repercussions when teachers - both men and women - exploit their position of trust.
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Sophie, whose identity we are protecting at her request, says she will “always have to live with” the abuse perpetrated by her own teacher - Mr X - during her teen years.
It doesn't matter how much trauma therapy I have...he violated part of who I was"
Sophie Webster
Now 34, she bravely recalls how what began as Mr X showing her “excessive attention” in class, spiralled into “daily sexual assaults” and how it still haunts her today.
She says: “It doesn’t matter how much trauma therapy I have, or how successful I become, I have to live with what happened.
“It wasn’t just that he sexually violated me, violated the boundaries and my trust - he violated part of who I was and what I was made of.
“Seeing other children not being protected makes me angry."
Shockingly, Kandice Barbour is the latest in a long line of teachers struck off in the past 18 months alone for misconduct towards pupils.
Thomas Moss taught chemistry at The Belvedere Academy in Liverpool and was banned from the profession last month after a TRA hearing found that he had an inappropriate relationship with a pupil which turned sexual shortly after she left the school.
Former Suffolk teacher Michelle Parry was struck off in December after the TRA ruled she had committed “serious sexually motivated misconduct” between 2009 and 2011.
The music teacher, 42, was found to have given gifts to former pupils, dubbed Person A and B, supplied them with alcohol and invited them to her home.
It concluded that she had a sexual relationship with Person A which included giving them oral sex in her car.
Andrew Thomas, a former English teacher at Sheffield High School for Girls, was also banned from the profession in April after admitting an inappropriate relationship with a pupil.
The TRA found he had emailed her using names such as "Fuzzy Eyes" and "starlet", gave her a lift in his car and failed to record one-to-one online meetings.
And PE teacher Sean Bettinson was jailed for 16 months in 2021 after admitting three counts of indecent assault and two counts of abuse of position of trust at Isleworth Crown Court.
He was ordered to sign the sex offenders register for 10 years and banned from teaching for life in October 2023.
Abigail Gill, Associate Head of Policy and Public Affairs at the NSPCC, says such cases are “deeply concerning.”
“Teachers play a vital role in their pupils' lives in terms of their education, safety and wellbeing,” she says.
“This deeply damaging behaviour can cause significant harm to the child and also undermines the dedication and commitment of the vast majority of teachers working in our schools”
Abigail Gill, NSPCC
“Children and teenagers need to be able to rely on them and trust them as they navigate some of the most important and challenging years of their lives.
“This deeply damaging behaviour can cause significant harm to the child and also undermines the dedication and commitment of the vast majority of teachers working in our schools.”
In Sophie’s case, she recalls Mr X being “charismatic and quirky,” when she met him in year eight.
She says he “took a liking” to her and even put her on a “gifted and talented” list.
Sophie soon started doing her homework in his classroom at break and lunch times.
But she says the tutor “crossed a line” when she was 14 - telling how he “touched her bottom” as he said goodbye.
He then sent her a hand-written letter yet it was Sophie who got into trouble because she sent a reply which she addressed to the school.
When her mum challenged staff over the letter, she was told the issue was ‘being dealt with’ and Sophie was moved out of the teacher’s class - but she was still able to visit his classroom during breaks and after school.
She explains: “He would talk to me about his relationship with his fiance, going into sexually explicit content or saying he didn’t find her attractive any more.”
Sophie recalls Mr X assaulting her for the first time by kissing her after school in his classroom when she was 15.
The abuse continued every school day for the next seven months, progressing to “touching” and “oral rape”, she says, adding: “It escalated very quickly.”
“He implanted this idea that he was going to leave his partner for me - that I was very special to him but could never say anything or he’d lose his job.”
The assaults “stopped overnight” when another teacher grew suspicious about the amount of time the pair were spending together and questioned Sophie - questions she says she “dodged.”
After that, Mr X blanked her - which she recalls was awful to manage.
“It spiralled me into destructive behaviour for quite a long time,” she says. “I didn't think I deserved anything better than being treated badly."
It was only years later when she was 24 years old and became a mum that Sophie recognised Mr X as a predator.
The moment came while watching a documentary about grooming.
“I watched the whole thing on the edge of my seat, recognising every bit of behaviour they described,” Sophie says. “I couldn’t sleep for weeks after it.”
He said I was very special to him but could never say anything or he'd lose his job"
Sophie Webster
Tormented, she confided in a school friend, who urged her to report him to the police.
“As a mum, I couldn't allow others to send their children to that school knowing what he’d done to me,” Sophie adds.
In late 2014 she anonymously reported the abuse to the headteacher of the school and Mr X was suspended from his job and arrested.
The teacher was charged with a number of sexual offences, admitting those against a second victim but denying abusing Sophie. But he was convicted by a jury following a trial.
The legal process brought the “trauma” of what had happened to the surface for Sophie.
“Everything started to unravel,” she says. “I almost dropped out of my degree and the relationship with my children’s dad broke down.”
Sophie was diagnosed with PTSD after the court case.
“There were times when I felt like I didn’t want to be alive,” she recalls. “My abuse felt so significant that I didn’t feel like I had direction.”
And chartered psychologist Dr. Louise Goddard-Crawley says such behaviour may stem from various factors including a distorted sense of boundaries and power dynamics.
She explains: “The school environment and the teacher-pupil relationship can foster misconduct due to exploitable power imbalances.
“Teachers may misuse their authority to fulfil personal needs, taking advantage of the inherent dynamics in the teacher-student relationship.”
With an increasing number of cases coming to light, Patsy Johnson-Cisse, of Brave Futures, a charity which supports young survivors of sexual abuse, believes children are feeling “more empowered to speak out” about teacher misconduct.
She says: “This and improved pathways to disclose sexual abuse may explain the spate of cases.
“Where it might seem that it is happening more, actually it’s that children feel able to speak up.”
Sophie has undergone years of therapy and received support via the NSPCC. She has retrained as a counsellor and now works to help other survivors of abuse. However, she wants to see conviction rates for all sexual offences improve.
She adds: "For a long time I felt like life had passed me by because of what happened, and it took a lot of therapy and work to realise that isn’t true.
“I have worked very hard at building a life that helps other survivors and that brings me a great amount of joy, satisfaction and fulfilment.
"I’m doing well now, but I am the anomaly of women and girls who have these experiences. Many go through a revolving door of therapy and don’t end up in good places.
“If you’re a woman or girl who comes forward and says this happened to you, you don’t always get the support you need.
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“It’s really important that [abuse cases] are taken more seriously.”
*Names have been changed