MARRIED teacher Jeremy Forrest from Petts Wood fled to France with a 15-year-old pupil who had a crush on him the day after police questioned her about their sexual relationship, a court has heard.

Fearing they were about to be exposed, Forrest, aged 30, booked them on a cross-Channel ferry to Calais before spending seven days on the run, it is alleged.

Jurors heard their relationship could not be compared to Romeo and Juliet but amounted to Forrest committing a "gross and long-term breach of trust".

Lewes Crown Court heard Scots-born Forrest taught maths at Bishop Bell C of E School in Eastbourne, East Sussex, and that his marriage to wife Emily was strained.

In France, he and the girl dyed their hair to try to avoid detection, Forrest set up a French email account and bought a French mobile phone, and bogus CVs were drafted in an internet cafe to help land them work.

Prosecutor Richard Barton said Forrest used the alias Jack Dean and the girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, gave herself a bogus name on the false CVs.

But an English bar owner to whom Forrest had applied for work recognised the pair from media reports, leading eventually to them being caught in the south western port city of Bordeaux on September 28 last year.

Opening the Crown's case, Mr Barton told the jury of four women and eight men: "This is not Romeo and Juliet; this is a 15-year-old girl with her own vulnerabilities, and a 30-year-old teacher. When parents send their children to school, they quite properly expect that those who teach their children will care for them properly."

He went on: "This case, the prosecution say, is about a gross and long-term breach of trust on the part of this defendant, not only of trust placed in him by the girl's mother and her family but also of other teachers and the governors of that school."

Forrest, of Chislehurst Road, denies child abduction.