http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/7531240/Teresa-McKenzie-her-pupil-and-600-calls-and-texts.html It was likely the longest 50 minutes of Teresa McKenzie's life. For 18 months the Welsh-born mother of two had withstood the salacious gossip, the malicious whispers and the exhaustive burden of repeatedly protesting her innocence. An experienced teacher, she had endured an 11-day trial during which she was accused of seducing a deeply disturbed 16-year-old boy in her care and of conducting a 10-month relationship with him. The seven charges against her made prurient reading: she was accused of having intercourse with the boy in the disabled lavatories of the British Library and of an intimate meeting in a luxurious London hotel.
But when the jury at her trial in Chester crown court returned after less than an hour's deliberation last week, to Mrs McKenzie's delight it delivered a unanimous not-guilty verdict. Indeed, such was the jury's conviction of her innocence that they took the unprecedented step of passing a note to Mrs McKenzie asking to give her a congratulatory hug.
Mrs McKenzie, 39, was jubilant. Her accuser, a pupil at the special needs school in Cheshire where she taught, had been exposed as a fantasist and an emotionally disturbed liar who had made a litany of false allegations of sexual abuse and sexual conquests.
Her story ought to be, one might think, a triumphant tale of a much-maligned teacher who fought back in a world where the authorities are over-eager to investigate every lurid allegation and equally swift to impugn the honour and integrity of a teacher with a hitherto unblemished professional record.
Alas this is not quite the case. While Mrs McKenzie has been fully exonerated – there is no question of her having conducted a sexual affair with her young charge – her behaviour throughout is at best naive and inappropriate, and at worst delusional and perilously close to a breach of her duty of pastoral care.
There was no affair. But Mrs McKenzie exchanged some 600 texts and calls with the boy, even sending him two love letters, written in language worthy of a love-lorn teenager. In one she confided: "I long to see you, such sweet anticipation makes my heart race… I love you for ever." In another, she wrote to her "gorgeous pirate. Dreaming of hiring a pirate ship and sailing across the seven seas, finding a deserted beach, just palm trees and lapping waves, soft sand and hot sun. What do you think? Would you like to come? Ah, it would be bliss, even for one day, to play… I will love you forever and ever and ever xxxxxxxxx."
She wrote of how she "longed" to see him and couldn't concentrate on a school meeting for thinking of his "beautiful eyes, strawberries-and-cream hair, soft hands, gorgeous laugh, strong shoulders and delicious lips." She signed it with a heart and 30 kisses.
What makes her behaviour all the more worrying is that a colleague had warned her that the boy, previously, had become attached to her too, and that Mrs McKenzie knew all about his troubled history. Yet her justification was: "I'm the sort of person who sends cards like that." One letter, she says, was an attempt to emulate the language of Shakespeare, since Romeo and Juliet was being taught in the class. The other she dismisses as a "silly idea to try to make him smile. He was suicidal at the time and I wrote the card to try to connect with him".
"Everything I did was part of trying to save a very damaged boy," she says. "The knowledge that anyone could think anything else of me has been absolutely harrowing and, at times, I have felt totally violated."
The truth is that Mrs McKenzie, while an experienced teacher, possessed little expertise in dealing with special-needs teaching. Yet she set out upon a mission to save this vulnerable and suicidal boy. Ignoring colleagues' advice and answerable to no-one, such was her belief that she alone had the skills to help him that she fell prey to his destructive delusions. Some might conclude that, out of her depth, she walked straight into an explosive situation.
There is no doubt that she was highly qualified as a teacher. After embarking on a career as an English teacher, by 2001 she had been appointed by Manchester's Local Education Authority as an English adviser, responsible for training teachers at 23 high schools and 13 special schools. Her role, however, involved a long commute from her home in Cheshire where she lived with her husband, Hastings, a science lecturer. She applied for the position of assistant head of a special school near her home and took up the post in February 2006.
The job involved working with children with behavioural problems. The boy, from Hackney, East London, arrived at the school in September, 2006. He was disruptive and difficult and was excluded a year later after a violent attack on another pupil. When his mother begged the school to take him back they did so and Mrs McKenzie, now deputy head, became his "key worker".
Though aware a colleague had refused to continue in the role after he spread rumours he had slept with her, Mrs McKenzie stepped in, relishing the opportunity to help him. "I felt a huge sense of responsibility to the boy," she says. "There wasn't a structure in place to support his needs and I felt it was down to me to try to manage him."
When the boy threatened suicide, the pair began their correspondence with each other outside school hours. "There was nothing indecent about them because they were usually all cries for help," she says. "I knew from experience that if I ignored him, his bad behaviour and suicidal tendencies would escalate. I was trying to manage his behaviour."
She readily admits she was at times alone with him – usually in her car. And the boy later falsely claimed that on some of these occasions she had performed sex acts on him. The reality, Mrs McKenzie says, is that usually he would sit there in silence or have music blaring. "The idea that anything else could take place is just beyond imagination. When you are an honourable person, you don't see what other people see, which is that I was terribly exposed."
Yet she went on to display a serious lack of judgement by sending him affectionate letters professing her love She insists these were attempts to "connect" with him. "I was using the tools of my trade and my kindness to try to draw him back from the brink – that's all I had," she says.
The boy, she acknowledges, became very attached to her and, on a visit to London in 2008 to meet his family, he trailed her back to her hotel. It was there that he later claimed they had sex. "It was an incredibly difficult situation," she admits. "He was staying with his parents but discovered what hotel I was in and came to see me. He barged into my room and was so volatile and fragile that I personally felt very vulnerable."
Mrs McKenzie did not report the incident but continued to "manage" the situation alone. Some two months later, a search of the boy's room uncovered the letters and Mrs McKenzie was suspended. She choose not to tell her husband, believing "reason would prevail".
Two days later, after explaining her actions, she was reinstated. She was given a written warning critical of her poor judgement. All the more reason, one might think to steer clear of the situation. But when she discovered the boy – who by now had been sent back home to London after being found in possession of drugs – had attempted suicide, she agreed to meet his mother in London.
She arrived to discover the boy, alone, standing in the station ready to meet her, and aborted the meeting. In a panic, she telephoned her husband and he suggested she go to the British Library to get away from him. The boy followed her inside and later alleged they had sex in a lavatory.
What happened next shocked Mrs McKenzie to the core. In September 2008, the school's head teacher told her a serious allegation had been made against her which was being investigated by the child protection unit. She still had not told her husband of her earlier suspension, but now came clean. "It was painful to tell him," she confesses. "But, although he was upset, he was immediately supportive."
However, Mrs McKenzie remained confident. Instead, on November 20 she was arrested and questioned on the basis of a complaint from the boy's mother. In February last year she was dismissed from her job, and in May was charged with seven allegations of sexual activity with a child. "It was horrific, I couldn't take it in," she says.
"Not one person said anything negative, or doubted me," she insists.
But although she may not have known it at the time, some of her colleagues were, in fact, very concerned. Indeed, it was her colleagues who had reported her to social services. According to a senior source at the Crown Prosecution Service, her fellow teachers made the complaint.
"Those complaints were part of the evidence we considered," he said. "There were also hundreds of text messages, letters and gifts. We examined the evidence and felt it was sufficient for a charge to be brought. The case went to court, the judge felt there was a case to answer and the jury gave its verdict."
That verdict has, of course, vindicated Mrs McKenzie. But it has also posed serious problems about the boundaries of appropriate behaviour. As Claude Knights, director of Kidscape, the young persons' charity, points out: "The language Mrs McKenzie used is beyond comprehension. Perhaps she was being naive or delusional but that kind of language is confusing for the pupils because boundaries are being eroded. She is 39, he is 16. The age difference and the imbalance of power makes the pupil extremely vulnerable."
There can be no doubt that the boy in the case was a serial liar and fantasist who had boasted of many affairs. Yet Mrs McKenzie choose to ignore this, so convinced was she that she could help.
Now, her teaching career in tatters, she is considering a future counselling fellow teachers who fall foul of similar false accusations. Doubtless, during the course of her court room ordeal, she has learned much to prepare her for such a daunting role.
Topic: Teresa McKenzie, her pupil and 600 calls and texts (Read 612 times)