Sally-Anne Bowen, a former chemistry teacher, has been found guilty of indecently assaulting two teenage pupils at an all-boys school in north London in the late 1980s. The 65-year-old, of Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, showed no emotion as a jury at Harrow crown court returned majority verdicts on seven counts of indecent assault following six hours and 29 minutes of deliberation.
Details of the assaults
Bowen taught at Christ’s College in Finchley when she assaulted the boys, who were aged around 14 to 15 at the time. She was in her mid-20s then. One complainant told the court he had sex with Bowen “about 20 or 30 times” over several months, visiting her home and considering her his girlfriend. He said he had fallen in love with her and kept the relationship secret because she had “drummed it into him” that he must not tell anyone.
“I never, ever spoke to anyone about it,” the man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told jurors. “I was always really aware, she drummed it into me.” He added: “Years she got to teach because I remained silent.” In a police interview, he described the experience as “the destruction of my education”.
Prosecution and defence arguments
Madeleine Wolfe, prosecuting, told jurors in her closing speech that the man’s evidence had “a real visceral quality to it”. She said: “There can be no doubt that there was a lasting impact on him. It’s not a schoolboy fantasy, is it? He’s started this account in 2014 – this has real-life implications for him, remained with him for decades.” Wolfe noted that the man only began to realise what had happened when he became a parent himself.
The second complainant said Bowen kissed him once in a cafe after he was goaded into it by other boys. Another former pupil, Tobias Oliver, who did not know the victims, testified that Bowen acted as if she was in “a Sabrina Carpenter video” in the classroom and “dressed and behaved more like my teenage female friends than the other teachers”. Oliver said classroom conversations often strayed from chemistry and became “quite sexual”, with Bowen telling students how she enjoyed giving oral sex to her boyfriend. He also recalled an occasion when Bowen discussed the merits of different sexual positions in a sex manual with students, and another when she sat on a desk and revealed her underwear.
School complaint and Bowen's denial
Richard Luker, head of science at the school in the late 1980s, told the court he remembered a complaint from the first victim’s mother about the boy planning to travel abroad with Bowen. Bowen claimed the allegations were “total fabrication”, citing an undiagnosed medical condition that made sexual intercourse difficult and painful. Her partner of 36 years, Darren Scotchbrook, said Bowen was unaware of the condition when they met in 1990 and that sex was “clearly not enjoyable for her”.
Bowen denied flirting with students, saying she was “just friendly” and “wasn’t going to dress like Margaret Thatcher” in her mid-20s. She denied any relationship with the first complainant, stating “Absolutely not, no relationship whatsoever. Student-teacher,” and said she did not remember the second complainant. The allegations were featured in the Tortoise Investigates podcast Lucky Boy last year. Bowen was granted bail until her sentence hearing on 20 November.
