Teacher accused of having sex with two underage pupils breaks down after revealing baby girl was 'taken away'

Rebecca Joynes, 30, denies six counts of having sexual activity with a child, relating to two boys

A teacher accused of having sex with two pupils - including one that got her pregnant - broke down whilst giving evidence after revealing their baby girl was 'taken away' from her.

Rebecca Joynes, 30, wept as she revealed to jurors that the baby was taken from her '24 hours after being born' and now sees her 'three times a week for three hours'.

Ms Joynes denies six counts of sexual activity with a child, and is on trial at Manchester Crown Court.

READ MORE: Everything heard in the first week of the trial of teacher accused of having sex with two pupils

The allegations concern two teenage boys - who cannot be named for legal reasons - she met while she was a teacher at a Greater Manchester school. Jurors previously heard Ms Joynes allegedly groomed one pupil with a Trafford Centre shopping trip, before having sex with him.

She then fell pregnant by another teenager, the court has heard.

Giving evidence for the first time, Ms Joynes repeatedly denied having any sexual contact with either boy when they were underage.

Of the first complainant, Boy A, she said that she noticed he was 'pushing boundaries' and 'getting a bit more flirtatious'.

“When I was at the front of the class and would walk past, he would say: ‘you're sexy’ and there was a comment going round the class, that I was ‘Bunder Becky’. ‘Bunder’ means bum. I chose to ignore the comments,” she said.

Ms Joynes said Boy A continuously asked for her number, and during a lesson she gave him nine digits of it, and he later guessed the last two. She admitted chatting with him over message the following day, and the conversation continued after he added her on Snapchat and she accepted, jurors heard.

When asked by her barrister, Michael O’Brien: “Is it normal for a teacher to be engaging in messaging with a student?”

She said: “Absolutely not, as a professional teacher I should have never engaged in that. I have to take accountability for that.” She added that accepting him on Snapchat was ‘really stupid’.

Ms Joynes said that an arrangement was made for them to go to the Trafford Centre, after Boy A had commented on her ‘Snapchat story’ about a previous trip, saying “When are you going to take me then?”

She said she initially laughed it off as a joke, but after he commented about a bracelet she was wearing, the arrangements were confirmed for them to go after school.

“At the time I agreed, and we said if we were late back, he would have to stay at mine,” she said, adding that Boy A was concerned about his parents finding out.

They both went to the Trafford Centre the following day, during which she bought him a £345 Gucci belt from Selfridges. “I shouldn’t have done this, but I just agreed and bought the belt and I should never have done that,” Ms Joynes said.

She said they both went back to her flat, and after chatting for a short while Boy A asked ‘how many people she had slept with’.

“I thought it was a strange question and said that, and then said ‘probably not as many as you,’” she told jurors. “I thought he obviously thought something was going to happen and we had a discussion that there was nothing going to happen.”

She said that she had offered to take him home, but he declined, and she told him to sleep on the sofa.

When asked why his DNA had been found on her bedsheets, she said she had left him alone in her apartment after going to work the next morning, adding: “It definitely wasn’t with me. At some point he must have gone into my bedroom and something happened.”

“Is there anything about that period you would change?” Mr O’Brien asked.

“Everything,” Ms Joynes answered emotionally, wiping a tear from her face. "As a teacher I should have never engaged in phone contact with a student, I should have never taken him to the Trafford Centre and definitely not let him into my apartment.”

She said the next time she was in school she was told of the allegations, and went to Boy B in a ‘panic’, and he deleted all of her phone content in a ‘factory reset’.

Of Boy B, she denied that any sexual contact happened until after he turned 16, stating she was suspended from teaching at the time. She said he initially added her on Snapchat, which she rejected, then he added her again and she agreed as she thought he ‘wanted to tell her something’.

She said a friendship developed, and went on to describe him as her ‘best friend’. Ms Joynes said they would go on walks together, that they would message on Snapchat, and she would help him with his mock GCSEs.

The defendant said Boy B made some sexualised comments towards her when he was drunk, but said she would laugh them off.

She said it wasn’t until after his birthday that he messaged her stating: “I’ve left school now” with a winky face emoji. He later went round to her apartment after she had received notice that she had been dismissed, and during an emotional conversation they had sex, she told jurors.

After this the pair entered into a relationship, which she said ‘wasn’t perfect as they argued a lot’ and described the teenager as ‘very controlling’. “It was quite toxic,” she said of the relationship.

They later discovered she was pregnant, at which point she planned a ‘date night’ by putting rose petals around her apartment, planting hidden notes for him to find, eventually leading to a baby grow which had words written on it saying: “I love my daddy to the moon and back.”

The court heard that she gave birth to their baby girl in January this year, but following an emergency court hearing, she was taken away from Ms Joynes.

Sobbing in the witness box she said: “24 hours after she had been born. At the moment I have contact with her three times a week for three hours and that’s it.”

Ms Joynes, of Pensby Road, Wirral, denies two counts of sexual activity with Boy A; two counts of sexual activity with Boy B; and two counts of sexual activity with Boy B while being a person in a position of trust.

The trial continues.