A jury took just three hours to clear Rebecca Whitehurst after hearing her accuser had faked incriminating WhatsApp messages and made up sexual encounters
A teacher accused of having an intimate relationship with a teenage pupil less than half her age sobbed when a jury cleared her of a series of sex offences. The jury took just three hours to acquit Rebecca Whitehurst, 46, of two counts of sexual activity with a child and one of sexual communications.
The prosecution had alleged Mrs Whitehurst had become emotionally and sexually involved with a 'troubled young boy' who was a pupil at her school. Her defence argued that although she may have handled things better the boy was 'far from' being a victim and that her accuser had subjected her to 'abuse, threats and manipulation'.
“He told me he didn’t want to tell me on email as he didn’t trust it. I sent him an email with my Snapchat username for him to find me so that he could tell me what the secret was. The secret was that he was in love with me,” Ms Whitehurst wept. She told the court he touched her in intimate areas, adding he then 'slapped me round the face and spat at me.” She said he did this ‘at least ten times’.
“I wore the necklace on a couple of occasions as I was worried he would kick off at me - I tried to reduce the opportunities to make him angry.” When the interviewing officer, asking about the alleged sexual contact in the back of her car, put it to him that Mrs Whitehurst was 'in a position of trust', the boy said: "Yeah, but when you are in love you don't care about anything do you?"
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