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A former teacher in the United Kingdom who is accused of having sex with two underage students claims the child she shared with one of the boys was "taken away" from her.
Rebecca Joynes, 30, of Manchester, who reportedly had the baby with an underage student while out on bail for charges relating to a previous incident with another teenage boy, claims her child was taken "24 hours after being born" in January and she's been limited to nine hours of visitation per week.
“At the moment I have contact with her three times a week for three hours and that’s it,” Joynes told jurors in court on Monday (May 13) via the Manchester Evening News.
Joynes was released on bail on orders not to have unsupervised contact with anyone under 18 following accusations that she groomed her student, identified as Boy A in court, by buying him a $430 Gucci belt and having unprotected sex with him at her apartment. The 30-year-old was suspended by the school and eventually fired before beginning a relationship with a 15-year-old, identified as Boy B, with whom she had the baby in January.
Joynes, who denied having sex with either boy when they were under the United Kingdom's age of consent (16), said she learned of the allegations against her after she had gone to Boy B in a "panic" and he'd deleted all of her phone's content. The suspect claims she began her sexual relationship with the second boy after he turned 16 and she was already suspended from her teaching job.
Joynes claimed the boy added her on Snapchat twice and she only accepted because she thought he "wanted to tell her something." The two developed what she claimed was initially a friendship, despite the teen making flirtatious and sexualized comments toward her when he was drunk.
Joynes told jurors that the boy messaged her "I've left school now" with a winky face after his 16th birthday and brought him to her apartment after she'd been fired. The two began a relationship that Joynes described as "quite toxic" and claimed the teenager was "very controlling."
Joynes has denied the two counts of sexual activity with Boy A, as well as two counts of sexual activity and two counts of sexual activity while being a person in a position of trust with Boy B during her ongoing trial.