REMORSE: My 10 Days of Madness - Female Teacher Who Seduced Pupil, Shared Bed With Him
Bernadette Smith yesterday told of her regret over the “10 days of madness” that ended in her sharing a bed with a teenage pupil.
To her colleagues at the secondary school where she taught English and history, the 35-year-old was popular and professional.
But her private life had been crumbling ever since a letter from the Child Support Agency arrived at the home she shared with husband Brian and their three children.
It was a request for maintenance from a woman who claimed she’d had conceived a child with Brian less than a year after he married Smith.
At Bannockburn High, she tried to hide the escalating turmoil in her relationship as more details of her husband’s deceit emerged.
Shamed teacher rubbishes claim that she had fling with schoolboy to get revenge on her cheating husband
Now, in hindsight, she believes it was the trigger for her first confiding in 16-year-old pupil Gary Ralston and then beginning a physical relationship with him.
That contact ended abruptly when Smith, of Denny, Stirlingshire, was confronted about her inappropriate behaviour by Gary’s gran on September 19 last year.
For months, she had taken a keen interest in the teenager’s education after noticing an improvement in his work before school broke up for summer.
Bad teacher's repentance
“I had a new job as an additional support needs teacher, helping children with learning difficulties, but I was still teaching some history classes.
We offered something called school service which allows senior pupils to help out with classes and Gary asked if he could help out in my second year class.
Senior staff were all quite happy because he’d never volunteered to do anything before. I just thought he wanted to fill up his timetable.
There never came a point where I thought I was attracted to him. I just knew I was thinking about him too much.
I knew his family circumstances and we were starting to have conversations which went beyond what should be said between a teacher and a pupil.
He told me things about his home life and, stupidly, I started to tell him about the problems in my marriage.
My relationship with Brian had been falling apart since 2009, when a letter from the CSA dropped through the letterbox.
He’d had a child with another woman which he initially claimed had been the result of a drunken one-night stand.
The child was four at that point. The other woman had fallen pregnant nine months after we married.
I thought my world had ended. As the years progressed it became clear it was not just a one-night stand. He was caught out in more and more lies.”
Smith says she began to piece together evidence which convinced her she was not being told the truth – at the same time, she was making CSA payments for the child’s upkeep by direct debit.
She said: “It is not an excuse but there were things happening which made me feel under a lot of pressure.
I knew I was about to separate from my husband. But that had nothing to do with Gary. My friends were telling me I was withdrawn or on a different planet.
I went to school on September 9 and asked Gary to see me in class at the end of the day, just before the last bell.
I told him he couldn’t do his school service in my class, that it wasn’t a good idea. I didn’t tell him why.
I went home feeling guilty because the truth was that we had already built a relationship of sorts.
I was telling him things I shouldn’t have and I thought it was wrong of me to cut him off without any explanation.
I felt really rotten the next day. By then, I realised that I liked him. It sounds crazy, and it was.
I felt I owed him an explanation and told him the reason I could not have him in the class was because I had been thinking about him too much.
Later, he sent me a message saying he was sorry he didn’t say anything back. He said he didn’t know what to say.
It was my last chance to step back and I didn’t. Somewhere in my head I thought I was doing the right thing.
I wasn’t nervous, I wasn’t excited. I felt like I was making him happy, making him feel better, which made me happy.
To her colleagues at the secondary school where she taught English and history, the 35-year-old was popular and professional.
But her private life had been crumbling ever since a letter from the Child Support Agency arrived at the home she shared with husband Brian and their three children.
It was a request for maintenance from a woman who claimed she’d had conceived a child with Brian less than a year after he married Smith.
At Bannockburn High, she tried to hide the escalating turmoil in her relationship as more details of her husband’s deceit emerged.
Shamed teacher rubbishes claim that she had fling with schoolboy to get revenge on her cheating husband
Now, in hindsight, she believes it was the trigger for her first confiding in 16-year-old pupil Gary Ralston and then beginning a physical relationship with him.
That contact ended abruptly when Smith, of Denny, Stirlingshire, was confronted about her inappropriate behaviour by Gary’s gran on September 19 last year.
For months, she had taken a keen interest in the teenager’s education after noticing an improvement in his work before school broke up for summer.
Bad teacher's repentance
“I had a new job as an additional support needs teacher, helping children with learning difficulties, but I was still teaching some history classes.
We offered something called school service which allows senior pupils to help out with classes and Gary asked if he could help out in my second year class.
Senior staff were all quite happy because he’d never volunteered to do anything before. I just thought he wanted to fill up his timetable.
There never came a point where I thought I was attracted to him. I just knew I was thinking about him too much.
I knew his family circumstances and we were starting to have conversations which went beyond what should be said between a teacher and a pupil.
He told me things about his home life and, stupidly, I started to tell him about the problems in my marriage.
My relationship with Brian had been falling apart since 2009, when a letter from the CSA dropped through the letterbox.
He’d had a child with another woman which he initially claimed had been the result of a drunken one-night stand.
The child was four at that point. The other woman had fallen pregnant nine months after we married.
I thought my world had ended. As the years progressed it became clear it was not just a one-night stand. He was caught out in more and more lies.”
Smith says she began to piece together evidence which convinced her she was not being told the truth – at the same time, she was making CSA payments for the child’s upkeep by direct debit.
She said: “It is not an excuse but there were things happening which made me feel under a lot of pressure.
I knew I was about to separate from my husband. But that had nothing to do with Gary. My friends were telling me I was withdrawn or on a different planet.
I went to school on September 9 and asked Gary to see me in class at the end of the day, just before the last bell.
I told him he couldn’t do his school service in my class, that it wasn’t a good idea. I didn’t tell him why.
I went home feeling guilty because the truth was that we had already built a relationship of sorts.
I was telling him things I shouldn’t have and I thought it was wrong of me to cut him off without any explanation.
I felt really rotten the next day. By then, I realised that I liked him. It sounds crazy, and it was.
I felt I owed him an explanation and told him the reason I could not have him in the class was because I had been thinking about him too much.
Later, he sent me a message saying he was sorry he didn’t say anything back. He said he didn’t know what to say.
It was my last chance to step back and I didn’t. Somewhere in my head I thought I was doing the right thing.
I wasn’t nervous, I wasn’t excited. I felt like I was making him happy, making him feel better, which made me happy.
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