I was 14 when I had sex with a teacher

There, on a nearby table was one of the teachers from his north Londonschool, Miss Bowen – or Sally-Anne, as she was known when not at work.

Embarrassed by his friend’s behaviour, Gareth quickly grabbed one of the mags and hid it either inside his blazer or down the back of his trousers – he can’t remember which. But it was too late, their teacher had seen what was in their hands.

Sally-Anne asked for the magazine, and, assuming she was going to confiscate it, Gareth passed it over. She opened the magazine under the table and started flicking through the pages.

‘She came to a page and pointed to it, and said, “That’s what mine looks like”. I said to her “What do you mean?” And she said, “That’s what my p***y looks like…’ remembers Gareth.

It was 1988 and 27-year-old Sally-Anne was a newly-qualified teacher, blonde, friendly and very attractive.

The two met when Gareth was 13, and would often chat on the bus or walking home, about what they’d got up to on the weekend or the other teachers at the school. Gareth, a bright, athletic kid with wavy brown hair, was flattered by the attention; it made him feel special.

In year ten at his comprehensive, Gareth was like any average schoolboy; he had a paper round, did well at school and on weekends he and his friends would hunt for golf balls at the local course which they would sell to buy sweets and comics.

Sally-Anne didn’t teach Gareth, but the pair became close, and months after they first started chatting, their relationship significantly shifted following the incident in the cafe.

It was a confusing moment for the teen. He knew a boundary had been crossed, that something was going to happen between them, but he didn’t understand sex or relationships – and he was shocked.

From that moment, Gareth saw Sally-Anne in a completely different light; she’d given him explicit permission to think of her in sexual terms.

The next day, when they met after school, he told her he loved her and instead of walking her for a bit before parting ways, he went with her all the way home. On arrival, she went inside, leaving her front door open for him to follow her in.

Sally-Anne made him a cup of tea, they smoked a cigarette and he left. The next day Gareth walked her home again. This time they went up to her bedroom – a small box room – containing a cupboard and a record player and kissed on the single bed.

When they eventually had sex, the teen didn’t know what was going on; Sally-Anne had to stop and explain to him what was happening.

Nearly 40 years later, Gareth is now sharing his story in the Tortoise Media podcast, Lucky Boy.

‘It was just a feeling that I’d never had before in my life. I didn’t understand how it felt. I couldn’t recognise that I had actually had sex and then we had this big discussion on whether or not I was a virgin, because though she had sex with me, I didn’t ejaculate in her,’ he says.

Gareth, who by this point was 14, remembers walking home after. ‘I was like the cat that got the cream. I was high as a kite.’ However, Sally-Anne warned him not to tell anyone.

The affair went on for weeks and on Thursdays – when he was supposed to be at games all afternoon – he would bunk off, go to the teacher’s house and spend the afternoon having sex, leaving before her flatmates came back from work at 6pm.

Soon, rumours started flying and their relationship became an open secret in the school.

One former pupil tells the podcast: ‘The close conversations. Being very physically close to each other, not holding hands, but flirting. You could see them, walking off to areas where they wouldn’t be disturbed.’

When word got back to Gareth’s mother, Philippa*, she was understandably furious.

Her son denied everything and she went to the school, to report what she’d heard, and the response was of non-concern. Instead, they suggested that Gareth was on drugs. Philippa took him to the doctor for a drugs test, which came back clear.

Then she found a glass with lipstick on in her kitchen – a memento that Gareth had taken from a pub when he went for a drink with Sally-Anne, and she went back to the school. This time Philippa was told that Miss Bowen would be leaving at the end of the term and wouldn’t be teaching again.

‘The school was warned that a member of their staff was committing a serious crime; sex with a minor, and instead of referring it to the authorities and launching a proper independent investigation, they quietly just made it all go away,’ podcast host and investigative journalist Chloe Hadjimatheou explains.

However, rather than getting back on track after Sally-Anne left, Gareth’s life began to unravel. He fell out with his family and started failing at school.

‘He went from being in the top sets and quite good academically to failing all his exams. He left school at 15 and by the time he was 16, he was homeless,’ Chloe tells Metro.

‘By the time he’s in his mid 20s, he’s tried to kill himself several times. It really derails his life, and it also affects sex for him forever, because he’s not really able to connect with girls his own age.

‘He freaks them out as he’s far too advanced sexually. But then it also affects sex for him forever, because it’s not an emotional thing. Sex for him, it’s very much a physical thing where emotions are closed off.’

It wasn’t until years later, that Gareth realised how inappropriate the situation was. He had considered it a meaningful relationship – until he learned there had been others. The discovery, coupled with the impact of going public about Sally-Anne, left Gareth to become dogged by anxiety and depression and unable to work.

Finally, 10 years ago, he decided to press charges. He chose to do so because he wanted acknowledgment of the harm he’d suffered – but almost instantly regretted the decision.

People Gareth had considered solid witnesses claimed to never being aware of the relationship, and Sally-Anne denied ever having any kind of sexual contact with him. The police investigated for years before the CPS dropped the case.

The question that many asked was; if he liked it at the time, why did he go to the police later?

Chloe explains: ‘The average age for a victim of historic sexual abuse to come forward, particularly men, is between the age of 35 and 50. And the reason it takes so long is because it takes time for the kind of grooming to wear off, to realise that they weren’t special – and that this wasn’t a special relationship. They were used by an adult for whom they meant far less than the adult meant to them.

Since Chloe began investigating Gareth’s story, she’s realised it’s not that unusual.

‘When you start looking for it, there are quite a number of these cases,’ she explains. ‘Last year, we had teacher Rebecca Joynes who had sex with two underage boys and got pregnant by one of them.

‘When the victim gave his statement, it really rocked me, because it was so similar to what Gareth is going through. The victim talked about wanting to protect her, believing that they were in love, not wanting to press charges or say anything that might hurt her or damage her, and then a slow realisation and dawning on him that he’d been used by this woman, and this wasn’t love, and it was incredibly painful and damaging for him.’

In 2023, following an investigation by the Teaching Regulation Agency, Sally-Anne Bowen was barred from teaching after she was found to have engaged in sexual activity with Gareth in the 1980s, something she continues to deny.

‘However, Gareth has since become really paranoid and wary, because he’s had so long of not being believed. He gave the police a whole list of people who he was sure knew about the relationship, including a lot of members of staff, and they all said, “we don’t know what he’s talking about”. It was horrific, nightmarish gaslighting.’

His mum Philippa tells the podcast: ‘They were disgusting, totally irresponsible. There were a lot of teachers there that knew about it and did nothing. I think it was disgraceful.

‘They lied to me, they failed in their duty of care to him. He was only 14. I could have killed her. If I met her now, I think I’d strangle her. She’s ruined his life.’

The unwillingness of those in the teaching profession and wider society to see Gareth as a victim of abuse, also shows an inequality in the way male victims are received, says Chloe.

‘The idea of a male, 28-year-old man having sex with a 14-year-old girl horrifies people, but there’s no idea that a boy can be damaged sexually and emotionally in a way that a girl can,’ she explains.

‘There are a significant number of these cases every year, and it’s very likely that they’re under-reported, because when they are, people don’t recognise them as abuse.’

*Names have been changed

Tortoise Media contacted both Sally-Anne Bowen and the school for comment. Find out more about Lucky Boy here.