The Runaway Schoolgirl (16 page)

S
oon after we arrived at Lewes Crown Court on the Friday morning, Neil Ralph came over to let me know that Richard Barton wanted to see me upstairs.

I didn’t know what to think. Inside the court, it was much busier than usual, with more people wanting to sit in the public gallery and significantly more press there than before. As Paul and I made our way upstairs, my mind was racing as to why Richard wanted to speak to us.

We were joined by Mark Ling and Andy Harbour. Richard explained that the judge had met with the defence and prosecution teams the day before and questions had been put to Forrest about the second charge of sexual activity with a minor. To my surprise and huge relief, Forrest had agreed for the charge to be included in this trial. It was as if a massive weight had been taken off my shoulders.

The formalities were explained to us. Judge Michael Lawson, QC would act as a magistrate while the charges of sexual activity with a child were put to Forrest for him to plead guilty, then the court would revert back to a Crown Court in order for the judge to pass sentence.

Trusted to keep these new developments to ourselves, we rejoined our friends and family in the courtroom. It was now packed, much fuller than it had been earlier in the trial. There were people we didn’t know in the seats that we had occupied all week, but Matthew, the court usher, arranged for the upstairs balcony to be opened and moved them up there.

I couldn’t believe how many people had come to ogle. It was like a cattle market. I couldn’t understand why they wanted to see something like this. This was about my daughter, it had nothing to do with them.

Gemma wasn’t in court that day, but I noticed nearly all of the team from Sussex Police who had worked on the case were there. For them, it was about closure as much as anything else, and I could see from their expressions that they were eager to hear the right result.

Forrest was brought up from the holding cells and I could see his mother and sister looking over anxiously, waiting for the inevitable. I could tell how upset they were. They had the added worry that Jim Forrest had fallen unwell the day before and been taken to hospital in an ambulance. I really felt for them.

Judge Michael Lawson, QC came into the courtroom and explained how the second charge of sexual activity with a minor was being added and that the court would revert to a magistrates’ court for the duration of the committal proceedings. The clerk of the court then read out five charges of sexual activity with a minor.

With each charge, Forrest pleaded guilty.

Gemma had already admitted that they’d had sex and the Crown Prosecution Service had irrefutable evidence to prove it, so there was no way Forrest could attempt to deny it. He almost seemed to shrug off the significance of what he was saying as he pleaded guilty each time.

Then, with the court effectively turned back into a Crown Court, the judge was able to pass sentence on both crimes.

In his sentencing statement, Judge Michael Lawson, QC told Forrest that he had ignored the cardinal rule of teaching and had subjected our family to ‘appalling distress’. He then added: ‘Your behaviour over 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.’

The judge also referred to the fact that Gemma had been ‘got at’ to change her evidence. She had, he said, clearly received assistance in relation to what she should say.

Meanwhile, Forrest just sat there, looking blank.

Forrest was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison for the five offences of sexual activity with a child and one year for the offence of child abduction, to run consecutively. That meant a total of five-and-a-half years. Depending on good behaviour and other factors, he is unlikely to serve the full sentence, but Paul and I felt that justice had been done: the sentence felt right.

Forrest was also made to sign the sex offenders’ register and banned from working with children for life.

I felt so relieved that it had all been brought to a head so quickly. As before, I didn’t exactly feel like celebrating; this
has never been about celebrating. That’s not something I will ever be able to do.

Outside the court, it was mayhem. Neil Ralph read out a statement I had prepared for the press. In it, I thanked the team from Sussex Police who worked on Operation Oakwood, East Sussex Child Services, the French team, the media team and everyone else who had helped bring Gemma home and brought Forrest to justice.

Finally, we could leave. I couldn’t wait to get home and see the children, and I began thinking about how I could rebuild my relationship with Gemma.

On the way home, I received a text from Kennedy High School, saying that the school had prepared a letter for the pupils to take home to their parents. It was about the day’s verdict regarding a teacher and pupil at the school.

I couldn’t believe what I was reading. How dare they write anything about my daughter without my consent? Gemma was no longer part of Kennedy High School and I wasn’t going to allow them to try and justify their incompetence to unknowing parents.

I immediately rang the school and asked to speak to Mr Worship. ‘What gives you the right to give out a letter about my child when you have done nothing to support her or my family? I am on my way to the school and I want a copy of that letter!’ I told him.

Paul and I then drove straight to the school and Mr Worship was waiting for us. He showed us into his office and began to apologise for the text coming to us; we should have been removed from the group text mailing list. I had no qualms in telling him that I regarded it as just another demonstration of the school’s total incompetence.

He gave me the letter and watched me as I read it. After a short while, I pushed it back to him. ‘You do realise,’ I said, ‘that I hold you responsible for why this got out of control?’ He replied, ‘Yes, yes, I know, and I completely understand.’

Then it was Paul’s turn. All the heartache of the day when Gemma went missing and the anguish of the weeks that followed came out in a flood. It had been brewing for nine months and he needed to vent his fury. He said he was absolutely disgusted by how the school had allowed this to happen. They’d been in the paper saying how much they’d done when really they’d done nothing. Worship just sat there and said, ‘Yes, yes, I understand.’ He couldn’t offer us any more and repeated himself, so with that, Paul and I stood up and marched out of his office feeling determined that this wouldn’t be the last they heard from us. We were so angry.

The extreme anger that I felt at that moment was to take over my life for the next few months. For a while, I wondered if it would ever go away. I reminded myself that I had suffered panic attacks for 10 years, but I’d been determined not to let them take over my life and, with help, had been able to overcome them. In the same way, I knew I would get through this feeling of rage that was taking control over me.

O
n the Saturday morning, as I had expected, the court case was all over the papers.

In my victim impact statement, which was read out in court, I talked about the effect the case had had on my family and me. I said that Forrest had robbed Gemma of her childhood and that it felt like the daughter I knew was dead because of what he had done to her.

I hadn’t prepared myself for how much the press would completely twist my words.

Somehow or other, a reporter had misquoted me and stories appeared, claiming that I had said ‘My daughter is dead to me’, as if I was saying that I wanted Gemma out of my life. It was totally untrue; the papers were totally misrepresenting
what I had said. If I could have, I would have bought every newspaper printed and burnt every single copy.

That horrible line ‘My daughter is dead to me’ implied that I never wanted Gemma in my life again, which couldn’t have been further from the truth. My actual words – ‘I feel the daughter I knew has died and it upsets me beyond words’ – were my way of saying that I felt that my delicate, innocent child had been taken away from me.

I knew that Gemma would see the headlines, too, so I immediately emailed her, warning her about what she might read and telling her that it wasn’t true. She didn’t get back to me, so I could only hope that she had read my email and had understood that I would never have said anything like that.

I was desperate to speak to the media and put the record straight. People needed to know that what they were saying simply wasn’t true. Chloe, though, rightly said that it was beyond my control and persuaded me not to contact the papers.

Thankfully, not all the press repeated this horrible ‘My daughter is dead to me’ statement – the
Mirror,
for example, accurately reflected what I had said in my impact statement – and many of them went on to report on how Kennedy High School had failed Gemma and my family and explained how the East Sussex Local Safeguarding Children Board had begun a serious case review into the actions of the school.

The
Daily Telegraph
’s report included quotes from Lucy Duckworth, founder of the child protection charity See Changes – ‘The repeated child protection failings at that school make it a complete shambles with clearly devastating consequences for the pupils in attendance there,’ she said
– and a number of others quoted representatives from the NSPCC.

The
Daily Mail,
meanwhile, featured a front-page story with the headline, KIDNAP TEACHER GROOMED ME AT 13. Inside was an interview with Chloe Queen, the girl that Forrest had allegedly groomed at the school he taught at before he started at Kennedy High School. The police had told me about her during the course of their investigations, and I had hoped that her evidence might have been used in the trial, but I suppose the Crown Prosecution Service must have felt that it wasn’t directly relevant to Gemma’s case.

But there was one newspaper article, written by the television presenter Judy Finnigan, which particularly made my blood boil. It appeared in the
Daily Express
around a week after the trial ended.

In the piece, she criticised me for having made Gemma go to court. As if I had any say in the matter! It was the Crown Prosecution Service’s decision who appeared before the court. She made all sorts of unfair assumptions about me as a parent and, because she was famous and in the public eye, I feared her comments would be taken as the truth.

I wanted to contact her to put the record straight and even considered sending her husband and fellow presenter, Richard Madeley, a message on Twitter, but I knew that Twitter posts were public and that it could potentially lead to even more bad press and Twitter trolls.

It was incredibly frustrating, but I knew I just had to let it go. Judy Finnigan is a mother herself and I would have hoped that she would have looked into my situation properly, rather than simply jump to conclusions. I remembered that her own daughter had once been the subject of some negative
and unpleasant press coverage, so presumably she too had felt attacked as a parent. The fact that she was criticising me like this was very hurtful.

A
fter I stepped out of court on the last day of the trial, I was bombarded with interview requests and invitations to appear on every TV show under the sun, but I always declined. One paper had even said ‘name your price' to me, but I had no interest in being part of the whole media circus. I knew the papers only wanted to know about the scandal and graphic details of what had happened between Forrest and Gemma. They weren't interested in the impact that his vile actions had had on my daughter or the rest of my family.

Money would never make up for what had happened to us. I thought about speaking to the press to put the record straight when they published things that were totally incorrect, but I knew I would never have any control over what they wrote and could have ended up endlessly fighting fires. I didn't want
to become that kind of character who was constantly using the press to sound off.

It soon became evident, however, that Forrest's sister, Carrie Hanspaul, had other ideas …

On Tuesday morning, I switched on my TV and saw Carrie being interviewed by Lorraine Kelly on ITV's
Daybreak
. She claimed that Gemma was the love of her brother's life and said that he had been misunderstood. She went on to say that when he came out of prison, if he was to continue a relationship with Gemma, she would be welcomed into the family.

I couldn't believe what I was hearing; I was disgusted. Forrest's family weren't interested in Gemma. They had always made it plain that they wanted nothing to do with her. If they really believed he was in love with her, why did they have to wait until he came out of prison to accept her into their family?

Carrie Hanspaul also talked about how the school had left me seven messages that I had failed to return. If she had actually taken the trouble to ask the police about those so-called messages, she would have known that this wasn't the case. She was just using anything she could to try and deflect the blame from her brother. I can't blame her for being loyal to her family, but it was incredibly frustrating to hear her rake over things that were totally untrue.

Her publicity campaign continued. After
Daybreak,
she went on to appear on several other programmes, all the while trying to paint a better picture of her brother. I heard a rumour that the Forrest family had employed a PR company in a bid to get the media to portray him in a more favourable light. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out when he is released from prison.

Shortly after Forrest was sentenced, his family issued a statement to the press in which they talked about the impact the case had had on their family, but now Carrie Hanspaul was turning up in the papers talking about her brother as if he wasn't a convicted criminal, telling anybody who would listen that he really wasn't a paedophile. Any respect that I had had for that family went out of the window there and then.

My family and friends were just as disgusted as I was. They desperately wanted to speak to the media on my behalf and give my side of the story, but I wouldn't let them. I didn't want to become part of a public feud.

Thankfully, once Carrie Hanspaul had finished with her publicity campaign, she flew back to her home in the Middle East, and that was the last we heard of her.

But the newspaper coverage of Carrie's despicable claims about her brother and his supposed love for Gemma was by no means the last of the unpleasant stuff I had to read. A few days before Forrest was sent to jail, the TV presenter Stuart Hall was sentenced to 15 months in prison for a series of historic sex offences. The sentence was subsequently doubled to 30 months by the Court of Appeal and he has since been sentenced to a further two-and-a-half years in prison for two counts of indecently assaulting a girl.

Quite a lot of newspapers compared Hall's 15-month sentence to Forrest's five-and-a-half years and asked why there was such a huge difference. Underneath, I would read comments from people saying that Forrest and Gemma had been in love and, as a result, he should have been treated as leniently as Stuart Hall.

It was awful to read this sort of thing. I was outraged. Gemma was a child, Forrest was her teacher. How could
they not see that Forrest had grossly abused his position of responsibility and the trust placed in him?

Why couldn't these people understand that, as Richard Barton said in his closing statement at the trial, Forrest had groomed a vulnerable young girl?