As the Home Office research conducted by the usual suspects has now begun to appear in the liberal legal press with the expected wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth, it was fortuitous that this article appeared in the press. True to my promise, I shall continue to highlight the dangers of weighting the trial process against the presumption of innocence or by well-meaning but misguided procedural devices, rigging the evidence against the defendant.
Elvira Fairhurst, a teacher who was aged forty-nine years, had a four-month affair with a fourteen year old pupil in her charge. The boy suffered from learning difficulties. The affair came to light when a crane driver witnessed her having sexual intercourse with the boy in her car, in a car park. She was jailed for four years after pleading guilty to eleven counts of sexual activity with a child.
By all accounts, until her frolics with the boy, Mrs Fairhurst was a regular churchgoer who had led a constructive and exemplary life. The point of this article is not to dwell on her criminality. The poor woman will be punished enough for her four months’ of madness. It was perhaps a small mercy that she was a woman. Had a male teacher so ravished a fourteen year old girl, we know that public reaction would have been wholly different; hysterical and disproportionate, in fact. The point is this: when first interviewed by the Police, Mrs Fairhurst claimed initially that the boy had sexually assaulted or raped her. On this occasion, the male had an independent witness who could testify to the contrary.