Forrest grump: The demonisation of teacher Jeremy is so childish

(This was published before Megan and Jeremy were tracked down in Bordeaux )

AM I the only Brit who believes maths teacher Jeremy Forrest’s romantic continental jaunt with pupil Megan Stammers does not constitute a heinous crime?

Jeremy Forrest

The news that the couple’s disappearance was to be featured on BBC’s Crimewatch programme confirmed to me that the UK authorities see the guitar-playing Forrest as an evil paedophile.
Which I doubt vey much.
We now know the guy has been under a lot of stress (helped, no doubt, by antagonism from those trying to keep him away from Megan).
So I can understand why they decided to flee to a country where they can be together without fear. And where better than France, a nation which understands the complexities of romance and passion better than any.
“We are not going to arrest Jeremy Forrest,’’ announced a senior French prosecutor on Wednesday. “He is not a criminal.’’
That’s because the age of consent in France is 15, not 16. But from the massive UK police and media campaign to track the couple down, you’d think the guy had run off with an eight-year-old.
The manhunt has been pretty useless anyway. As I write, the lovers are probably somewhere in darkest Transylvania. Or perhaps even in Torrevieja, in which case Crimewatch won’t be hearing from me.
Did you wonder, as I did, why the UK police called that dramatic initial press conference with Megan’s parents on Monday…and then told us Megan was in no danger?
Forrest’s ‘crime’ seems to be that he has allowed himself to become emotionally entangled with one of his students.
Hardly an offence to justify the kind of dragnet normally reserved for dangerous killers.
Assuming that Jeremy and Megan are aware of the chasing rat pack, their feelings for each other will be growing by the day. And that is ­precisely what Megan’s family do NOT want.
The fact that the couple have been canoodling for several months in the face of widespread disapproval indicates that they are happy to lock out the world if it allows them to stay together.
And the WORST thing Megan’s family, her school and the police can do is to try to keep them apart forcibly.
Love will always find a way, even if Britain’s ‘enlightened’ society still deems any teacher-pupil relationship as sordid and wicked. When the teacher is married (albeit very flimsily), the demonisation increases dramatically. So much so, that we have so-called experts suggesting on Sky TV that he’s a child-molester who has been ‘grooming’ Megan to satisfy his evil desires.
‘‘Megan has done nothing wrong,’’ came the cry at that first over-dramatic press conference. What about Forrest? Silence…until that French lawman opened his grand bouche on Wednesday.
If Sir is found, or he and Megan decide to come home, I fully expect the UK police to hurl Forrest behind bars.
However, Megan is unlikely to encourage Jeremy to surrender to a system that may well deprive her of her boyfriend for several years.
The likelihood is that he will be banged up and charged with everything from abduction to under-age sex. Just about everything except Whipping a Pleb on a Bicycle, in fact.
From the way Megan’s distraught parents pleaded with her to phone them, you’d have thought her life was in imminent danger. Yet the police assured us they had no fears for her safety, despite her failure to return to the UK with Forrest on a pre-booked car ferry on Sunday.
The public witch-hunt against her companion just didn’t add up from the start. To demonise Forrest in huge headlines merely drives a bigger wedge between Megan and those who have already tried and convicted the man she ran away with.
It certainly makes it less likely that she will contact her seemingly frantic ­family.
Forrest clearly has issues of his own, not least the break-up of his marriage – and naturally Megan’s nearest and dearest would prefer her to mix with youngsters her own age. There is also the unwritten taboo that the paths of teacher and pupil must never cross outside the classroom.
As for the fact he is twice Megan’s age, so what?
One of my daughters married a man 14 years older than herself and he’s the best father in the world. There were a few tut-tuts when she started going out with him when she was 20 – but they knew what they wanted. And so, I guess, do Megan and Jeremy.
How many of you reading this column had a schoolgirl crush on one of your teachers? OK, so you just fantasised about it…but what a romantic thought, to be whisked off to an exotic country, away from all the nay-sayers, by the man you want most in the entire world.
Megan sounds to me like a typical teenager– a bit of a rebel who resents her parents and school officials trying to regiment her into a lifestyle that pleases them.
My other daughter rebelled at 14, became a punk and was barely 16 when she moved into a hovel with her boyfriend. But she grew out of the romanticism (along with her hideous nose ring) and now we look back and laugh at it all as she works to keep her own flock of three from going astray.
I don’t know the full details of Jeremy Forrest’s background, but in the absence of anyone speaking up for him, I found myself trying to understand his motives.
Logically, he should have waited until Megan is 16. But if they want to be together so much that they are prepared to risk everything, then my instincts say leave them to get on with it.
At least until they are ready to return to the fold.
From my own experience, the best way of bringing young rebels back into the fold is to give them more rope, not hang them. What I do know is that the way the Jeremy and Megan affair has been handled does nobody any favours.
If I were them, I’d dump the car, jump on a long-haul flight … and head for somewhere exotically romantic with no extradition treaty.
It’s unlikely they’ll live happily ever – but what a good plot for a romantic thriller.

Published in The Courier (www,thecourier.es) -  September 28, 2012

Kill now, talk later: Trigger-happy Yanks have the answer to burglars

IT’S not often that I praise the laws of God Bless America, but the fattest nation on earth have got at least one thing right.
If a lowlife breaks into your home, you are free to play The Terminator and save the cost of keeping him behind bars for a few years. (We’re talking heavy-handed Yanks here, not namby-pamby British wimps who’d send the villain on a luxury cruise on the QE2).
I’ve always been against free public ownership of firearms and America is testimony why. The evidence is overwhelming - countless massacres by nutters who can walk into a shop and buy a lethal weapon over the counter. That’s as mad as the archaic UK law that allows a homeowner only to use ‘‘reasonable force’’ to deter an intruder.
The fact the scumbag is trying to bludgeon you to death is merely coincidental. Just take your punishment like a good victim and the government will see you get a nice funeral.

Alan Duncan: Support for victims

I am told that Spain, surprisingly, has similar laws to the UK when it comes to burglars. Guardia officers from Guardamar advised members of my local Neighbourhood Watch this week NOT to take on robbers because the law favours them rather than their victims.
Just as it seems to have done with the Leicestershire couple arrested this week for firing a gun at four men who broke into their home in the middle of the night.
One of the villains called an ambulance, another went to hospital (nothing trivial, I hope) – and the husband and wife were arrested on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm.
Although the intruders face prosecution for aggravated burglary, local MP Alan Duncan, a government minister, said: "The householder is the victim here and justice should support them and prosecute the burglars."
Problem is that Duncan and his cronies – the people who make the laws of the land – have yet to change the archaic legislation that burglars can treat their victims as if they were BBC TV’s Mrs Brown doing a head-hitter’s job on Grandad with her frying pan. Talk about a pain in the feck!
When TKO Radio disc jockey Rachel Angus confronted an intruder wearing  a balaclava in her living room here on the Costa Blanca recently, the villain was probably more frightened than she was.
But had he moved menacingly towards her, what was she supposed to do? Leaf swiftly through the law books for an explanation of ‘reasonable force’ before he landed the first blow?
No, she should have whacked him over the head with any available ‘weapon’ – and if it killed him, tough.
Fortunately, I suspect the joke they call political correctness (and which chokes anti-crime activity in the UK) is not always respected in Spanish Guardia circles – particularly when they catch these scumbags in the act.
A friend once asked an officer what she should do if she and her husband ever cornered an intruder.
“Just put him face down in the nearest river - we won’t be rushing to find him,’’ was the Guardia man’s reported answer.

A medium to rare talent - but how many clairvoyants are genuine?

I WAS probably 35 when an aunt told me that my late mother had been a medium with an enormous interest in the spirit world.
The news that Mum, who died in a polio epidemic when I was six years old, sent a shiver up my spine.
I wondered if she might have shuffled off all her psychic baggage along with her mortal coil - and dumped it all on me.
Basically, I was scared and I figured that if I steered clear of it all, just as I have always tried to avoid horror films, then I could live in peace.
There’s nothing I would like more than to hug the Mum I scarcely remember - and if there really is life after death (or should that be debt) maybe I will. But I do not believe that chucking euros at someone who purports to have a hotline to both Heaven and Hell will persuade my Mum or Dad to reveal even the tiniest secret. And certainly not to anyone outside the family.
Until a few months ago, I had an open mind on the psychic phenomenon. Now I believe most ‘mediums’ are gift-of-the-gab merchants who may think they have special powers but are more interested in cashing in on them.
Yes, money certainly plays a part. And in some cases big money.
The much-feted American psychic John Edward (yes, the Jedward of the West) charges 800 dollars for a private consultation. Don’t tell me he’s in it to help people - it’s all big business to him.

John Edward charges $800 for a reading

As for his ability to contact the departed, I can only go on the few minutes I watched of one of his TV shows the other day.
The guy supposedly builds bridges between the studio audience and their dead loved ones. But his lines of enquiry merely added to my growing reservations about the clairvoyancy business.
I’m certainly not convinced  by generalities such as ”Your Dad wants you to know he feels he could have been a better father’’. Just about every Dad on earth could say that.
So when Jedward (that’s him in the two pictures) fired the  opening line, ’’I’m getting a ‘D’ or it could be a ‘D A’ at a packed studio audience, he could have roped in any one of those punters. Who doesn’t know a David, for heaven’s sake?
Still, for all his unconvincing patter, at least the American Jedward provides decent entertainment. Like the moment he probed the studio audience, brow furrowed in concentration, and announcd: ”I’m getting the name Stacey. Is there a Stacey here?’’
‘’My name is Samantha,’’ came the instant, irrelevant reply from one overkeen onlooker, her mind seemingly lost in Stace.
I’m not being fair in doubting John Edward’s spiritual talents because I’ve only caught snippets of his show. But I have had my cards read by two ladies here on the Costa Blanca, one of whom is particularly highly-rated.
This very confident and assertive woman spent half an hour turning over Tarot cards and hitting me with vague generalities that revealed  nothing meaningful about my past, present or future.
I was waiting to be told something that only my eccentric Dad and I could know - like how he’d put sugar rather than salt on tomatoes.
Or how he would assure me I’d be quids in when he died - only for the Inland Revenue to clean up his entire estate in back taxes when he finally keeled over.
Eat your hearts out, Lester Piggott and Ken Dodd.
To those of you who do believe in mediums, clairvoyants, spiritualists or whatever, I am NOT suggesting you are being conned.
All I am saying is that I am not convinced. Having said that, I am also very nervous about delving too deeply into the subject. And that, I suppose, suggests that I don’t know what I believe.
Hell, I think I’ll leave it till Christmas and nip along with Ebenezer Scrooge for a reading from Marley’s Ghost.
Bah, humbug.