commentary by Patrick H. Moore
Suppose your daughter is 26 years old. She is a pretty young woman, a bit on the immature side, who teaches drama at a high school. Your family is not American – you are English and you reside in or around the Bristol, the famous English port city on Merrie Olde England’s southwest coast.
Then, when you least expect it, you discover that your daughter is in serious trouble for having had a 7-month sexual relationship/affair with a 16-year-old student. Based on the evidence, it seems likely that their relationship was entirely consensual. They exchanged more than 12,000 texts and the boy, perhaps proudly, sent explicit naked pictures of himself to your daughter.
The whole situation is, of course, humiliating to your entire family and you are probably furious with your daughter for exercising such poor judgment. But in your heart of hearts, do you believe that your daughter’s mistake was sufficiently serious to warrant jail or prison time?
After all, the boy was only one year removed from the legal British age of consent which is 17.
What works against your daughter, in addition to the fact the boy was under-aged, is the fact that your daughter was his teacher. Thus, by throwing caution to the wind, your daughter, whose name is Kelly Burgess, betrayed her obligation as a teacher to instruct and guide her pupils in an appropriate fashion.
Further humiliation stems from the fact that your daughter had sex with the boy at a hotel paid for by their school as part of a training weekend in Warwickshire. This aggravating little piece of evidence was introduced in open court at your daughter’s sentencing in Bristol Crown Court in front of Judge Euan Ambrose.
The judge was informed that Ms. Burgess met the unnamed 16-year-old at a school production in December 2012. Their relationship was launched after the first of the year and apparently reached its first climax during the couple’s ill-fated stopover at the Warwickshire hotel.
They were also apparently nature lovers. In any event, they enjoyed a camping trip in Devon in July.
Crown prosecutor Sam Jones provided this damning evidence to the court:
‘More than 12,000 text messages were found passing between the defendant and the boy over a relatively short period of time. The messages are at times sexually explicit and sometimes intimate.’
It appears that this clearly infatuated couple – despite their age difference – proceeded in more or less the fashion of many young lovers.
Their undoing was their visit to a sexual health clinic in August. For reasons that are somewhat unclear – but certainly suggest that the burden of carrying their guilty secret any longer was more than the boy could bear — the pupil revealed that he was dating his teacher and provided her name.
That was it. Game over. The nurse said she had to report it to the authorities. The boy panicked, ran to his teacher, and returned with her. She then falsely claimed to be a 17-year-old but it didn’t work. The police were informed and Burgess, who worked at a secondary school in Somerset, was arrested later that month.
While being escorted to the police station, Burgess received a text message from the pupil that said: ‘Got the police round, don’t text back don’t be scared just get your story straight when they come to you. I will phone you later.’
The court heard that staff at the school became aware of the relationship and the headteacher was forced to warn the head of the drama department, who in turn spoke to Ms. Burgess.
Prosecutor Jones added: ‘Police spoke to a number of members of staff employed at the school and there was some concern raised by other members of staff about the closeness of relationship of this defendant with students, in particular the use of social media to communicate with students.The headteacher had raised the concern with the head of department who had raised it with the defendant.’
Ms. Burgess’s barrister, Raymond Tully, did his best to support her: ‘She is not a vamp or cougar, far from it. She is just a young woman somewhat immature, somewhat mixed up who fell in love with the wrong young man.’
From his place of high authority, Judge Euan Ambrose summed it up like this:
‘You make it clear that you were both participating in what you thought was a relationship of equals, but it was quite clearly not a relationship of equals – you were at all times a teacher and he was a pupil.’
Although Ms. Burgess had held out for some time and had only admitted her guilt when confronted with the text messages and the naked pictures of the boy saved on her laptop, she broke down and sobbed hysterically as the judge gave her a 10-month suspended sentence.
Ms. Burgess did say that she was not aware she had done anything illegal as she apparently believed the boy had reached the age of consent and insisted the relationship was ‘loving and on equal terms’.
Her counts of conviction to which she previously confessed are four counts of abuse of trust – sexual activity with a boy aged 13 to 17.
Ms. Burgess, of course, was fired from her job and must register as a sex offender for the next 10 years. She is also prohibited from most forms of contact with children.
While suspending her sentence, Judge Ambrose told Ms. Burgess that losing her teaching career was ‘the greatest punishment in many ways’.
It is noted that a victim impact statement from the pupil, who is now taking his A Levels, said he did not agree with the prosecution.
‘There was absolutely no predatory element whatsoever. It was a consensual relationship.’
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Although Ms. Burgess has escaped without time in custody, her collateral consequences are severe. The loss of her profession as well ten years of sex registration, restrictions on her interactions with children, and the ongoing shame and humiliation certainly constitute substantial punishment. Many, however, feel, the outcome would have been different if the sexes had been reversed and Ms. Burgess had been a man.
The Telegraph’s Cristina Odone voiced that opinion in stating that the sentence would have been more harsh if “Kelly Burgess had been a Keith Burgess.”
“Double standards prevail to this day. A female teacher who abuses her position by becoming sexually involved with a male student is seen as Mrs Robinson, not a criminal.”
To me this is a tough call. I might tend to go along with the judge, however, because the 16-year-old victim was almost of age, the relationship does appear to have been consensual, and – at least when viewed superficially — the victim shows no sign of psychological damage. I could be wrong though. What do you think?