Disgraced maths teacher Jeremy Forrest has been jailed for five and a half years today and banned from working with children for the rest of his life.
The 30-year-old paedophile was yesterday convicted of abducting his schoolgirl lover when she was 15 and taking her on the run in France for eight days.
This morning Forrest decided to plead guilty to five charges of sexual activity with a child to avoid another trial.
The jury heard that during their four-month affair they sometimes had sex up to eight times a night in his car, home or hotels, and the 30-year-old first kissed her in a classroom when she was 14.
Prosecutors at Lewes Crown Court said their affair was ‘not Romeo and Juliet’ and that Forrest was a paedophile satisfying his ‘carnal desires’.
Judge Michael Lawson QC sentenced Forrest to four and a half years for the five offences of sexual activity with a child and one year for the offence of child abduction, to run consecutively.
He told Forrest: ‘Your behaviour in this period has been motivated by self-interest and has hurt and damaged many people – her family, your family, staff and pupils at the school and respect for teachers everywhere.
‘It has damaged you too but that was something you were prepared to risk, you now have to pay that price.’
Judge Lawson also imposed a Sexual Offences Prevention Order (Sopo) on Forrest banning him from working or volunteering with children and unsupervised contact with children forever.
Judge Lawson told him: ‘It was your duty as a teacher to stop her infatuation not to fuel it.
‘Your research into what might happen to you if you were caught is proof of the deliberate nature of your behaviour.’