A maths teacher accused of having sexual relations with two students and having a baby with one of them arrived in court today wearing a pink baby hat, after denying it was to “win” the jury’s sympathy.
Rebecca Joynes, 30, lowered her head and clutched the knitted garment behind a purple notebook as her father put his arm around his daughter’s waist.
The former teacher arrived at Manchester Crown Court every day of her trial with her baby hat tucked down her pants.
She denied introducing it to gain the “sympathy” of the jury and insisted she had not chosen to remain in the witness box out of a desire to ensure they could see him during her evidence.
She is on trial accused of having sexual relations with one student before becoming pregnant with a second. She has denied having a “powerful sexual attraction” to 15-year-old boys.
TODAY: Rebecca Joynes, 30, hung her head as she arrived at Manchester Crown Court and clutched the knitted garment behind a purple notebook as her father put his arm around his daughter’s waist.
YESTERDAY: She denied using to “win” sympathy from the jury as she faces trial accused of having sexual relations with two students.
Yesterday she broke down in tears as she revealed her daughter was taken from her 24 hours after her birth.
In a letter read out at her trial for alleged sexual offences, Joynes told the teenager, with whom she had become pregnant, that she hoped they could “continue with this for a while longer”.
Questioned for a second day, Joynes agreed to invite the boy to her luxury apartment when he was 15, but insisted she only became “sexually attracted” to him after he left school.
She denies taking his virginity shortly after he turned 16 and says they first slept together after she was fired as his teacher, when it was no longer illegal.
Joynes also denies having sex with a second 15-year-old boy from her maths class months earlier, although she admits he spent the night at her luxury flat after she bought him a £345 Gucci belt.
Yesterday she admitted she was “ashamed” of her actions which she said had ruined her “dream job”.
Dressed in a white top and black trousers, Joynes continued to show off the hat while in the witness box at Manchester Crown Court today.
She revealed in court that her daughter was taken from her within 24 hours of her birth (pictured, arriving at court on Wednesday).
In a letter written to one of the teenagers, Joynes said: “Every inch of you is perfect.”
Asked about Boy B’s claim that she became “controlling” as their relationship progressed, prosecutor Joe Allman read extracts from a letter Joynes wrote to him after she left school.
In one, he wrote: “Every inch of you is perfect and you are everything I ever dreamed of.”
She also wrote, “I know we’re struggling right now and we’re both extremely stressed, but I really hope we can work something out to keep this going for a while longer.”
When Mr Allman asked if the letter was part of an attempt to “manipulate” Boy B “to prevent him from abandoning him”, Joynes replied: “No.”
“We were in a relationship, I was in love with him, I was pregnant with his child,” Joynes said.
He added that the letter was written “a year after he left school.”
Allman told Joynes that she would “hint” to Child B that she would “hurt herself” or commit suicide if he ended the relationship, or that “if she did, she would be responsible if you lost the baby.”
Rejecting the accusation, he stated that his words had been: “I can’t do this anymore.”
“I wasn’t committing any crime by doing any of that,” he added.
“Things got really difficult when I got pregnant.”
Allman told Joynes that at the time of the relationship with Boy B, whom she had taught when he was 15, she was 29, living in her own apartment and driving an Audi.
‘Who controlled who?’ she asked.
“At that time no one was controlling anyone,” Joynes responded.
However, he later became “very controlling,” she added.
Previously, Mr Allman asked her if it was her case that she was only “sexually attracted” to Boy B from the moment he “went legal”.
“Yes,” she replied.
The former teacher, who came to court every day of her trial wearing a pink knit hat tucked into her pants, burst into tears as she gave evidence.
Joynes arrived at court and left Manchester Crown Court laughing with her father on Tuesday afternoon.
When asked if she found him “sexy” when he came to her apartment when she was 15 and 16, but before leaving school in the summer of 2022, Joynes insisted she did not.
She told jurors she was “stupid” to exchange messages with Boy A and invite him back to her Salford Quays flat in October 2021, but denies her account that they had sex twice.
She said she felt “embarrassed” and added: “I had ruined my chances of getting my dream job.”
Joynes admits that by secretly seeing Boy B while awaiting trial on Boy A’s accusations, he was violating bail conditions prohibiting him from unsupervised contact with anyone under the age of 18.
According to prosecutors, the second student, Boy B, said he had unprotected sex with Joynes after she told him she had polycystic ovary syndrome and was unlikely to conceive.
Joynes today denied saying this and told the jury she must have discovered she had the condition after she “opened up” to a student about having been diagnosed with the condition when she was 18.
Joynes admits having a sexual relationship with Boy B, which ended when she told him she was pregnant, but insists it only began after he turned 16.
She denies six charges of sexual activity with a child, two of them in a position of trust.
The trial continues.
