Would you trust your teenager with this chick?
This is Helene Goddard, a trumpet teacher at a public school in the UK, who has just been jailed for 15 months for having a sexual relationship with a 15 year-old pupil.
While the prison sentence is immediate, she is to be allowed to write to the girl while she is in prison and will not be stopped from seeing her upon her release.
Which is likely to be in 7 months time.
Ms Goddard punched the air in delight when she realised that she would still be able to continue the relationship, although she would be banned from teaching for life and would have to sign onto the sexual offenders’ register.
An inappropriate response?
In Goddard’s mind the two “love each other very much” and perhaps, she feels she has been hard done by.
I think quite the opposite.
We don’t expect sexual offenders to look like this. Blonde and attractive, Goddard is surely the fantasy of many young boys, and clearly the odd young girl or two, as well.
And she is teacher. A popular one.
Which makes her actions even more heinous. A 15 year-old child is a child, no matter how advanced or mature she might appear. She might be having sexual relationships with boys or girls of her own age group, but teachers are adults in positions of extraordinary influence and power.
The adults we trust to teach them.Not to take them on weekends to Paris and have sex with them using handcuffs and sex toys.
I wonder what her punishment and the reaction to her would have been, had she been a seedy, snivelly, dirty-raincoat wearing man?
