Distraught mother stormed school reception ‘after son spent night with teacher’
A “distraught” mother stormed into a school reception after being told her teenage son had spent the night with his teacher, a court heard.
The 15-year-old, identified only as Boy A, had lied to his mother that he was staying at his friend’s house, but instead was at the apartment of school teacher Rebecca Joynes where they twice had sex, jurors were told.
Joynes, 30, at the time a high school teacher, is on trial at Manchester Crown Court accused of six counts of engaging in sexual activity with a child, including two while being a person in a position of trust, all relating to two teenage boys. Neither boy must be identified.
Boy A told jurors he and the teacher exchanged messages on Snapchat and she picked him up after school on a Friday night.
His mother, in a statement read to the court, said on the day in question, her son came home from school, changed out of his uniform and packed an overnight bag.
He told her he was staying at his best friend’s house as he had done before.
After her son left, later that night, she spoke to him and he told her he was playing Fifa with his friend at his house.
Boy A later told police he had arranged to meet Joynes who took him back to her flat at Salford Quays, where they twice had sex, the teacher warning him, “No one had better find out”.
The next day boy A went shopping with his mother at the Trafford Centre when she noticed a mark on her son’s neck, which she said, “looked like a love bite”.
“I said, ‘What’s that mark on your neck?’” his mother said.
“He said, ‘Oh nothing, I don’t know.’
But the following Monday morning she got a call from the school saying an “allegation” had been made.
At the school a police officer told her they had received an anonymous report from Childline concerning an allegation involving a teacher and her son.
Her son was also called out of class but told his mother, “It was just a stupid conversation in group chats that got out of hand,” and he told police called to the school it was just, “friends having banter”.
His mother replied: “You could have cost this girl her career now!”
She left the school with her son, who was advised by police to stay off social media as rumours were swirling.
But back home she got a call from the mother of the boy her son had supposedly been staying at, the night he was allegedly with Joynes.
“I think I owe you an apology,” she was told, before confessing Boy A had not been staying with her son at her house – and that she had picked him up from an address in Salford the day after.
Boy A’s mother said, “Where did he stay then? It wasn’t at the teacher’s was it?”
She was then told, “Yeah, it was”.
Boy A’s mother’s statement continued, “I was upset and crying at this point. Crying my eyes out.”
She then went back to the school.
Det Con James Partington, of Greater Manchester Police (GMP), said in his statement, he was still at the school as Boy A’s mother returned.
“She entered the school in tears,” he said. “She stormed into reception and I would describe her as in a panic and distraught.”
Boy A’s mother described her son as “clever” and doing well at school.
A short time before the alleged offence, he had come and said to her, “My teacher is well fit Mum. Everyone says she’s well fit.’
“I just laughed it off,” his mother said in her statement. “I thought it was typical teenage boys’ comment.”
Joynes was suspended from school as police investigated and she was bailed on condition she have no unsupervised contact with anyone under 18.
But it later emerged that Joynes had been in a long-term sexual relationship with another teenage boy she had been in contact with while suspended.
The youngster is the father of Joynes’s young daughter.
The defendant claims sexual activity with Boy B did not start until he turned 16.
Joynes denies two counts of sexual activity with Boy A, two counts of sexual activity with Boy B and two counts of sexual activity with Boy B while being a person in a position of trust.
The trial continues.
