A woman in her 40s fought back tears as she told a teacher conduct panel about how she had a sexual relationship with her former teacher, John Tomsett, when she was 18.

Mr Tomsett, who has taken leave from his post as headteacher of Huntington School, near York, was an English teacher at Eastbourne Sixth Form College when he taught the woman.

The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said she was having a troubled home life during the two years Mr Tomsett had taught her at A level.

She said that she would often stay back after class and admitted that she had “a crush” on him and that he “had a wonderful way with words and was quite beguiling”.

She said that on Mr Tomsett’s last day in the job, at May half-term in her second year in the sixth form, they kissed in his classroom.

She said: “He pulled me towards him and I thought it was like a line from a play or a novel. It was like my English literature classes were coming to life. He looked at me with so much emotion and expression and there were tears in his eyes and I really felt he wanted to say, “I love you.” We kissed, with him sitting on the desk and me standing between his legs. It felt exciting and shocking all at the same time.”

Fighting back tears, she added: “It’s really hard to carry on an adult life when I feel the guilt of that moment - that kiss in the classroom and not being able to talk about it with anyone. Who could I tell?”

The panel heard that Mr Tomsett would later pick her up in his car and they would go for walks at local beauty spots where, on one occasion, he “dropped her hand” when he saw a colleague, and, on another occasion, at a different spot there was “consensual oral sex and masturbation”.

The woman said that, on another occasion, while fully clothed, Mr Tomsett - nine-and-a-half-years her senior and married - lay on top of her “rubbing up and down and simulating intercourse”.

She said: “I didn’t have the confidence to say it was hurting me and can we stop? He told me that he wanted to make love to me.”

Sexual relationship with ex-pupil

Defending Mr Tomsett, barrister Andrew Faux said the woman had later described a “summer of wonderful romance and passion” in a letter which she had written to herself which was not to be opened until her 40th birthday.

Mr Faux told her: “You put yourself forward as a confident young woman seeking an illicit affair,” to which she said: “It felt like an unstoppable train” and that she tried to stop it by ending the relationship in August that year.

Mr Faux told the panel that the couple twice met again in 2011, when they made love on each occasion. He put it to the woman that there were emails in 2012 in which Mr Tomsett told her that he wasn’t able to leave his wife and be with her “as she wanted”. 

She said: “I wanted to understand what making love to him felt like in 2011. He told me in ‘92 that I shouldn’t go away and that if I came back then that would be a testing time, and it’s hard to forget these things.”

The panel heard how the woman visited Mr Tomsett at the school in Pickering where he was headteacher in 2004, while on holiday with her husband and children.

She told the panel that she had been having “continuous flashbacks” and that she needed to see him. She said: “He gave me a tour of the school and I said he was very lucky because he got to move away, while I’ve got to live with the ghosts in my home town.”

Mr Faux said that after 15 years as a headteacher, Mr Tomsett had now developed a better understanding of teacher-pupil relationships and believed that there was an imbalance of power in favour of the teacher, and that, in hindsight, he now “regretted “ the relationship because of the distress it had caused the woman.

Mr Tomsett admits engaging in a sexual relationship with a former pupil during the summer in which she received her A-level results, but denies that this amounted to professional misconduct or that it brought the teaching profession into disrepute. He denies another allegation of failing to maintain professional boundaries by engaging in an inappropriate relationship with a pupil.

The hearing continues and is expected to last all week.