A newlywed supervisor at a school blighted by staff sex scandals ignored warnings about inappropriate behaviour to have a relationship with a 15-year-old pupil, a court has heard.
He instigated the relationship with the teenage girl within weeks of starting work in Bridlington, East Yorkshire, and supervising a lesson for her class.
Reen’s behaviour was even more shameful because he was replacing a female teaching assistant who had been having a fling with a boy pupil.
Because of the history of scandal the new employee was given an induction course in how to behave with children, Hull Crown Court was told.
The Year 10 girl joined the out-of-school martial arts club that Reen ran and they began exchanging text messages.
Helen Hendry, prosecuting, said Reen kissed the girl for the first time after everyone had left the club and ‘events proceeded quickly’.
Over four months they regularly met at the club or his family home, while his pregnant wife was out. They exchanged 800 text messages, it was alleged.
The court heard Reen had married only in May last year but he was having sex with the teenage pupil by mid-July.
In her evidence, the girl claimed he had promised they would ‘run away together’.
Describing the relationship, she said: ‘I told my mum I was going to meet my friends when I went to meet him. We had sex seven or eight times.
‘He always knew when my 16th birthday was. He never tried to stop the relationship between us. He said we’d run away together before I’d even left school.
‘Towards the end of the relationship I wanted to end it. I knew his wife had a baby on the way.
‘But he said he wasn’t going to throw our relationship away when he’d put it before his job and his wife and his kid on the way.’
She said that, when questioned by police, she initially denied the relationship to ‘protect’ him.
Reen, of Bridlington, admits a charge of sexual activity with a child under 18 by a person in a position of trust, but denies a further six offences of sexual activity with a child under 16.
T
he prosecution called his claim that the girl tricked him into believing she was 16 a ‘bare-faced lie’.
Mrs Hendry said: ‘We do not say he forced her to do anything she did not want to do. But she was a pupil so any contact was forbidden. She was under 16. We say he knew that from the start of the relationship and carried on regardless.’
The court heard that when the girl joined his club her mother filled in a form which included her date of birth and mobile phone number. He then began texting the teenager.
Some of the hundreds of texts he sent to her were explicit and included intimate photos, the court heard. The girl began showing the texts to friends and word spread.
Mrs Hendry said: ‘When the rumours reached staff in October, they rightly got in touch with the girl’s mother and the police.’
Reen told the court the girl claimed she had been kept back a year in school and insisted she was 16. He said she had gone to the martial arts centre wearing makeup and ‘looked 19 or 20 to be honest. I said she shouldn’t be here but she said, “I’m old enough to do what I want”.’
The trial continues.
In 2006 54-year-old Ian Blott who was a senior art teacher at the school was jailed for four years for a two-and-half year relationship with a female pupil.
The married teacher began the relationship when she had just turned 15.
In 2007 the school’s IT and science teacher, Steven Edwards, 35, was jailed for four years and nine months after being convicted of having sexual relations with three pupils aged between 14 and 16.
Popularity: 1% [?]
