The 100-Year Life Health Education and Government
When he was 14, he fell in love with a teacher. After she walked out of his life everything started to unravel
Tortoise’s new investigative series asks who gets to be a perpetrator and a victim. Listen to Lucky Boy now.
It was a warm July evening in 1988 when Gareth* went to the pub in Finchley with his teacher, Miss Bowen. It was end of year staff drinks and the back bar was full of teachers from Christ’s College secondary school. Gareth felt nervous and self conscious – not surprising given he was only 15 years old and sitting there with his 27-year-old lover.
The teachers must have at least suspected that the relationship was sexual. One former teacher has since admitted Miss Bowen and Gareth were seen walking arm in arm together. Another says the rumours about the couple were so widespread that most of his colleagues must have been aware of them.
But that evening in the pub no one said a word, until the bell rang for last orders. Then, according to Gareth, his form tutor walked over and told Miss Bowen it was very late for such a young boy to be out, and advised her to make sure Gareth got home safely. The form tutor denies that this interaction took place.
Miss Bowen started a friendship with Gareth back in March 1988 as they rode the bus together after school. Then just 14 years old, Gareth had barely kissed a girl. One lunch break Gareth remembers Miss Bowen opening an adult mag, pointing to a naked woman and telling him that’s what she looked like naked.
Within weeks, he says they were having sex almost every day at her house. The relationship consumed him. He lied to his family and kept it a secret from all his friends at school, but former pupils say the couple were often seen sneaking off together.
It seems Gareth may not have been alone. Other former pupils have come forward to Tortoise to allege sexual relationships they say they had with Miss Bowen or deeply inappropriate sexualised behaviour towards children at the school.
Sally Anne Bowen has previously denied any sexual interaction with Gareth or other pupils.
As Gareth’s behaviour deteriorated and he became more withdrawn his mother called the school in desperation. She says she was told Miss Bowen would be leaving at the end of term and would not teach again.
It seems the school brushed the affair under the carpet, giving Miss Bowen a good reference and allowing her to go on teaching for more than three decades at 15 different schools. When, as an adult, Gareth tried to make sense of what had happened he was met by a wall of silence. None of the teaching staff would admit they knew about the relationship and lots of former classmates wondered why he was complaining. After all, it wasn’t like he was raped by Miss Bowen, they said. He had been a willing participant – the lucky boy who got to have sex with the teacher everyone fancied.
Tortoise sought Sally Anne Bowen’s response on all these allegations but she declined to respond.
In 2023, a Department for Education tribunal concluded on the balance of probabilities that Miss Bowen had engaged in sex with Gareth and she was banned from the profession for life. Throughout the hearing she categorically denied having any sexual relationship with any boy. She has since lodged an appeal against the decision.
More than three decades later, stories about female teachers having sex with their students are rarely taken seriously. These days if a man is caught with a girl from their school the media often presents him as a predator or ‘sicko’. But if the alleged offender is a woman she’s ‘sex mad’ and ‘sex addicted’, terms often accompanied by long descriptions about how attractive she is. There’s an assumption that sex for teenage boys is an achievement – and that boys are somehow immune from emotional harm.
Gareth now believes he was hurt by his relationship with Miss Bowen, but perhaps even more damaging was the cover-up that followed and continued into his adulthood.
*Not his real name.
Listen to Lucky Boy now.
