Sally-Anne Bowen, 65, has denied sexually abusing two teenage boys at a Catholic school nearly 40 years ago, telling jurors the allegations are “the workings of a fantasy.”
The former chemistry teacher took the stand at Harrow Crown Court on Monday to rebut claims from two men who say they were 14 or 15 when she taught at the all-boys Christ’s College in Finchley, north London. Bowen, who was in her mid-20s at the time, faces seven counts of indecent assault and denies all charges.
One accuser testified that he had sex with Bowen “about 20 or 30 times” over several months, including at her home, and that he considered her his girlfriend and believed he was in love with her, jurors heard. The second accuser alleged he and Bowen kissed in a cafe after he was “goaded” into it by other boys, and said he recalled touching her breasts.
Bowen described the allegations as a “total fabrication” and “the workings of a fantasy.” Asked by prosecutor Madeline Wolfe why one accuser would come forward more than three decades later, she said she had no idea.
“I don’t know why he is making these allegations. I have no idea what is going on at this point,” she said.
“I think he certainly had a crush on me at school,” she surmised.
She said she was regularly the target of inappropriate remarks from students as one of the only young female teachers at the school, but said she ignored the gossip.
“It was not a huge problem – I would hear comments as I walked past and I ignored them, they didn’t result in me being hassled or harassed,” she said.
Bowen said she had no idea who the second accuser was.
Also brought up during her cross-examination was her manner of dress during her teaching days, with the prosecution suggesting she wore “tight tops” and “mini skirts” at school. Bowen denied the claim, saying she “would not have allowed to get away with very short skirts.”
When she was asked to step out of the witness box to demonstrate the length of the skirts she’d wear as a teacher, she placed her hands a few inches above her knees.
“They were way shorter than I’m wearing now, they were not mini skirts,” she claimed, reminding jurors she was a young woman at the time.
“I wasn’t going to dress like Margaret Thatcher,” she said.
One former pupil testified about an alleged incident in her classroom where a boy was reading a “sex manual” — possibly the Kama Sutra, which he claimed Bowen flipped through while extolling “the merits of different sexual positions” to the students. She strenuously denied the incident ever happened.
One of the accusers claimed she acted in class “like she was in a Sabrina Carpenter video” — a nod to the pop star’s controversial 2023 “Feather” video, which was filmed in a New York church.
“I have never in my teaching career seen boys looking at a pornographic magazine – the only magazine that I ever confiscated was a football magazine,” she said.
Asked whether she crossed professional lines and treated the boys more like “friends” than students, she said “I was a nice person and students talked to me.”
“I wanted to be liked and I make no apology for that. I was young, it was my first teaching job, of course I wanted to be liked,” she said.
The trial at Harrow Crown Court continues.
PAGES: