Most parents have experienced the awkwardness of seeing their child’s teacher out of a school context, and know how you can be momentarily flummoxed about what to say.
For Richard Ralston, it happened one morning at 7am in his own home as he went to check his 16-year-old son Gary was getting ready for school. As the bedroom door opened, Gary was, indeed, putting on his school uniform.
And sitting on his bed was his teacher Bernadette Smith, 35, who’d been suspended from her job just the day before for having inappropriate relations with the teenager. One might reasonably have expected Richard, 42, to hit the roof and call the police.
But he didn’t. Because, astonishingly, he’d not only known about the ‘relationship’ for several days, he’d actively condoned it.
‘I asked if she wanted a wee cup of tea,’ says Richard, who is separated from Gary’s mother.
‘I was a bit gobsmacked. It’s not what you expect to see, is it? I knew there was something going on between them, but her spending the night, well, I just couldn’t believe it. I still can’t, really.’
His attitude may go some way to explaining how the situation got so out of hand.
This week married mother-of-three Smith, who taught English and history at Bannockburn High School near the Ralstons’ home in Cowie, Stirlingshire, was handed a two-year supervision order. She was also put on the sex offenders’ register after being found guilty of having sexual relations with a pupil. The court heard she had become obsessed with Gary last year while dealing with problems in her marriage, which is now over.
Smith had groomed Gary by asking him to her classroom at lunchtime, before meeting him in a local park where she kissed him.
Though she insisted she had not had full sex with the boy, she did admit to spending the night in his bed, dressed in jeans and a bra, before his father found them the next morning.
Passing sentence, Sheriff Wyllie Robertson, said she was guilty of ‘a very serious abuse of trust’.
‘We expect our teachers to care for their children and protect them from abuse,’ he said.
That he stopped short of jailing Smith has infuriated Gary’s mother Carol Morgan.