Yes, teachers seducing pupils is vile. But, I know what scheming temptresses girls of 15 can be - I was shameless

  • As a teen, Melissa pursued two men who were at least 15 years her senior
  • Similarly, Jeremy Forrest's school-age lover wasn't a passive victim

By Melissa Kite

Dressed up to the nines, and looking much older than my years, I was 15 when I started going to night spots.

My friends and I would be dropped off by our dads at the local discotheque dressed like Madonna in her Eighties phase, with big hair, skin-tight leggings and armfuls of bangles.

Far from looking like the gauche innocents we were, we prided ourselves on appearing as grown-up and - dare I say it - sexy as possible.

No innocent: Melissa Kite, 15, at a party in 1987


Looking back at pictures of myself in those days, in some I could be mistaken for a woman in her 20s. It makes me cringe slightly to see them.

What makes me shudder most is the memory of tricks we used to make ourselves look older; lashings of make-up, short skirts, very high stilettos and hair back-combed to give us more height.

And why? Because, as teenage girls we quite naturally craved male attention. But not from the spotty, penniless boys of our own age. Oh no. We wanted to catch the eye of 'proper' men.

Like heat-seeking missiles, we would suss out the cool, older guys - ideally ones with a car and a job - with the intention of enticing them to chat us up and take us out for dates.


Each of us firmly believed we knew our own minds and were in control of what we were doing. None of us thought about the possible consequences of the potent effect we were having on men. To us, winning their attention seemed exciting and romantic - not dangerous.

And, yes, there were two occasions when I attracted older men whom I believed to be oh-so cool. And if it wasn't for the fortuitous combination of their restraint and my father's fury and protective instinct, my life - and theirs - could have turned out very differently.

Which is why when the furore surrounding the Jeremy Forrest abduction case exploded, I felt a sharp pang of guilt.

Aged 15, at a party
Aged 15, at another party

Precocious: Melissa, 15, making the rounds of the various parties she attended as a young girl; Melissa dated two men over 15 years her senior when she was aged 15

There, but for the grace of God, went two other guys, I thought. We were all spared potential heartache because the men themselves were responsible - the relationships never went further than kissing - and because my parents were smart enough to intervene.

I was a little out of control, in truth, but thankfully my parents were thinking for me.

The reason for my guilt is I know from my own actions just how single-minded a teenage girl, fuelled by hormones and just beginning to explore her power over the opposite sex, can be in pursuit of an older man.

Of course, as a teacher, Forrest was guilty of a terrible abuse of power when he started a relationship aged 30 with a 15-year-old pupil.

I'm not defending men, especially teachers, who prey on young girls. But there is a grey area.

It is stating facts to say that, whether we like it or not, girls do this sort of thing all the time. And faced with the full force of a teenager's lust for romantic adventure, it cannot always be easy for a man to say 'no'.

Take the moment when I, a precocious 15-year-old, was chatted up one night by a 29-year-old clean-cut, well-spoken guy. I was delighted to have caught his eye.

He seemed the very definition of suave sophistication. He drove an MG sports car and had a job. He was everything the silly, immature boys my age queueing at the nightclub door were not.

does not ring true to me that the girl in the Forrest case was an entirely passive victim, especially since she has told us herself, in an interview, that she was not.'

I lied to him, saying I was 16, and we went on a date the following week. Then I made the mistake, after an evening spent ten-pin bowling, of bringing him home to meet my parents.

The true depth of my naivety is displayed by the fact I genuinely thought they would be delighted.

They were courteous, but when he had driven off, my father took me aside. 'That man has got to go,' he said. 'Why?' I asked, distraught. 'Because he's too old for you.'

I was furious but never saw the man again. Then, in an act which will strike a chord with parents of teenage girls everywhere, I immediately set my sights on a chap in his 30s at a local rugby club social evening.

He was handsome, a great sportsman and extremely popular with the girls. Besides, I wanted to stick two rebellious fingers up to my dad.

In fairness to this older man - who was also jobless, living at home with his parents and clearly going through some sort of early mid-life crisis - he took a lot of convincing to take me out because he knew how old I was.

But I pretty much stalked him by repeatedly chatting him up whenever I saw him, wearing my most flattering top, and being as funny and alluring as I could.

In the end, he agreed to go out with me, in a group, to the funfair one afternoon. The flirtation that developed was laughably tame: a game of tennis and a glass of Coke at the local racket club followed by a sneaky snog at the Saturday-night disco.

But that was down to his self-restraint and my father's fury when he found out. Dad read us the riot act when the man walked me home, and the hapless chap didn't need much convincing to sling his hook.

Finally, I gave up on older men. It was too much trouble. I found a nice boy of 18. My days as a teenage seductress were over.

party girl
Precocious young Melissa

Party girl: After her experiences dating older men, Melissa settled on a 'nice boy of 18'

But I've asked around my social circle, and almost everyone can recall such a case from their teenage years.

I remember a girl from my school who flirted with a teacher of ours when he was 30-something and she in the sixth form. They started dating when she left school and the relationship lasted quite a long time.

Given her experience, and mine, it does not ring true to me that the girl in the Forrest case - called 'Gemma' to safeguard her anonymity - was an entirely passive victim, especially since she has told us herself, in an interview, that she was not.

Reading Jan Moir's passionate piece attacking Forrest as a child abuser in this newspaper this week made me uneasy.

Moir insists the girl still does not understand what she has done and is trying to 'stitch a lovely, romantic narrative on to what is a clear-cut, contemptible case of abuse'. But is it that simple?

When Gemma insists she is still in love with the man with whom she absconded to France, and is looking forward to marrying him, why can we not believe her?

The twist in the tale for those who denounce Forrest as a child abuser is that Gemma, now 16, still insists the affair was, and is, consensual.

What Forrest did was foolish, exploitative and illegal. But is all exploitation the same?'

Forrest has committed a crime, for which he is being severely punished. But is this crime - technically, the abduction of a child - really on a par with, for example, kidnapping a little girl from a hotel room in Portugal?

Is the grave mistake for which he has been jailed for five-and-a-half years really worse than the actions of former BBC presenter Stuart Hall, who was jailed for just 15 months for molesting children as young as nine?

What Forrest did was foolish, exploitative and illegal. But is all exploitation the same? Is it sensible to equate sex between a 30-year-old and a 15-year-old, when she claims it was consensual, with the wickedness done by paedophiles to infants?

It might be possible that, as you can make things worse for victims of date rape by underestimating that crime, you could make things worse for girls like Gemma by over-dramatising what happened to her.

While Gemma's father says he is glad Forrest is planning to marry her, her mother is devastated because her daughter is no longer an innocent. One can see it from her perspective. But at least the father's approach will allow the girl to move on.

If Forrest marries her and they are happy, or even if they marry and it doesn't work out, that is surely preferable to telling the girl she is damaged goods and should be plagued by regret for the rest of her life.

Guilt trip: British maths teacher Jeremy Forrest (left) and his student (right), together aboard a ferry from Dover to Calais


I don't necessarily believe they are love's young dream, but the most traumatic thing that happens to Gemma may not be her affair with Forrest so much as being arrested by police at her school for refusing to give evidence against him, just after she finished her GSCE maths exam.

Part of the problem is that, as a society, we are deeply hypocritical about underage sex.

So many of the great love stories we mythologise involve a girl on the cusp of adulthood - Romeo and Juliet, to name but one. Admittedly, that didn't end well. But when Romeo stands beneath Juliet's  balcony, the audience never shouts 'Get lost, you creep! The girl's 13!'

While we fret over the 15-year gap between Forrest and his former pupil, it is noticeable how the world is not outraged by the 26-year gap between actor Alec Baldwin, 55, and new wife Hilaria, 29.

Could this be because Baldwin is so rich and handsome?

Prosecutors told the court the Forrest case was about 'his desires to have young sexual flesh, to satisfy his own carnal lusts'. But that could apply to every rock star and Hollywood A-lister who divorces his ageing wife and drapes a young girl on his arm.

Forrest has fallen foul of an age-of-consent law that is necessarily arbitrary. For the sake of civilised order, the line has to be drawn somewhere. But there will be grey areas.

The truth we baulk at, because it is difficult and unpalatable, is that some girls are more mature at 15 than some men are at 30.

Whatever the truth of the case, I do not believe I am the only woman out there reflecting on her own teenage antics as Forrest languishes in jail.