In 2018 I was 13, going 14. I remember that the maths teacher I had used to always come really close to my desk, so that his upper thighs were touching the table and his groin area was directly across from my head, no more than 35cm away. I distinctively remember him rocking backwards and forwards, enough to make the table rock with him. The student I sat next to used to make comments to his friends before the lessons began like, “I’m going to have to put up with our teacher putting his balls on the desk again”. And I always remembered leaving his classroom every day I had him feeling the same guilt. Like I was doing something to attract his attention? Because he never did it anywhere else, never even on my peers side of the desk. It was always my desk, on my half, in front of my face. But I could never figure out what was making him do it. It went on for no more than 2 months. It only stopped when parents evening came around and I forced my brother to go with me, (my brother is an older student of my math teachers). Which is where he made the correlation between me and my brother. This translated to him backing away from my desk during lesson times. He’s a middle aged man thrusting his groin into a child’s face. If that isn’t weird or strange to you then I don’t know what universe you’re living in.

Then after a year, and everything had stopped. I had always been bullied at BBS but during these next 2 years it got really bad and my mental health got to a very dark place. The teacher and I started having 1to1s and we started talking more because I would see him outside of lessons as he was helping me get my grades up, and I was always early to lessons. So we would talk for 5-10 minutes before lesson begun. This and the next few things went on until I left BBS. I was 15 and 16 at this point and I had wiped the groin & desk situation out of my mind. So nothing alarming occurred to me about seeing him 1to1. Like I said my mental health was very bad during these 2 years and I could tell he could see how bad I was struggling, he always made the initiative to ask how I was and try and comfort me. None of this seemed alarming because for a long while I thought he was just doing his job and safeguarding to making sure I was alright, as I was under his duty of care. Until I started noticing him being weird around me, like he was subtly flirting with me outside of lessons. He used to very obviously copy my actions, in an attempt to make me laugh or smile, he’d compliment my hair when I dyed it, cut it, or tied it up, he’d compliment what accessories I had on, like my watch or necklace. He never minded me being in his personal space, he always had a very distinctive cheshire cat grin, and very piercing eyes. On the last parents evening with him he was very heavily leaning over the table at me, even though my mum was there, and he only looked at her once. Nor did he even look at the paper with my progress on it, but he did stare at me for 10-15 minutes straight (with blinking obvs), while grinning at me. Which was the point the rose coloured glasses came straight off, it was so out of the ordinary to blindsight my work, progress, what I needed to do to succeed? He knew I wanted to get the next grade up and we were working together to help me achieve it. Yet he didn’t mention any of it? He just aimlessly stared at me, smiling. In the moment I didn’t know what to do but look at the desk or the floor out of being so uncomfortable.