Rebecca Joynes is accused of sleeping with two 15-year-old pupils and becoming pregnant to one of them.
A ‘gaslighting’ maths teacher accused of having sex with two teenage students has been accused of painting herself as a victim because she is a woman, a court heard.
Rebecca Joynes, 30, is accused of ‘grooming’ a 15-year-old boy by buying him a £345 Gucci belt during a shopping trip before having sex with him at her apartment.
She then became pregnant after allegedly starting a relationship with a second underage boy while on bail over the previous allegations.
Joynes denies her relationship with the first boy – known as Boy A – ever became sexual, and claims she only had sex with the second boy after he turned 16 and had left school, meaning no offence had taken place.
But during her trial at Manchester Crown Court, the former teacher was accused of a ‘naked attempt to garner sympathy’ by visibly tucking a baby’s bonnet belonging to the daughter she had with one of the teens into her trousers.
Joe Allman, prosecuting, told the jury ‘She’s aware of the optics here. She’s not stupid.
‘Is Miss Joynes, more shrewd than she lets on?’
The prosecutor also refuted Joynes’ claims she had been gaslit during her relationship with Boy B.
He asked the court: ‘Who is being gaslit, and who is doing the gaslighting?
‘Is what is going on here is: she hopes you will treat her very differently because she is a woman and not a man, and you will see this case differently because she’s a woman and not a man?’
Mr Allman questioned whether the boys would have been ‘disparaged in the same way in an attempt to discredit them if they were two girls of similar age’.
He then asked the court how they would’ve reacted if ‘pretty’ Rebecca Joynes, described as petite and soft-spoken, was instead a man named Robert and the alleged victims were girls.
He told the jury of seven men and five women to imagine ‘Robert’ a 28-year-old teacher, just out of a nine-year relationship, lonely, good-looking, who schoolgirls pay a lot of attention to, flatter and make inappropriate comments to.
The prosecutor outlined a scenario where the male teacher exchanges Snapchat messages, buys one girl a £350 belt and takes her back to his flat, while a second teenager falls pregnant to ‘Robert’.
‘Are you in any doubt about what’s happened here?’ Mr Allman said.
‘You would not have one shred of sympathy for Robert. This thought experiment drags Miss Joynes’ defence into the light.’
He also suggested Joynes wanted the jurors to forget she is a mature, responsible adult and that the students were teenage schoolboys.
‘It has the effect of warping the picture, so she almost becomes the victim and the boys the perpetrators,’ Mr Allman added.
Earlier, Joynes told the jury she had ruined her ‘dream job’ with stupid ‘mistakes’ by meeting up with the two teenagers and having them back at her flat, but denied under-age sex.
Both boys were 15 when Joynes began taking each one into her flat and both had been communicating with her on Snapchat – where messages are deleted and not recoverable by police.
In both cases, the activity was a secret from their parents and they both flirted with her, boy A calling her ‘sexy’ and boy B sending her a message saying: ‘Get your tits out.’
Joynes admitted she had split after a nine-year relationship, was lonely and flattered by the attention.
In a letter, she wrote to boy B, saying: ‘Every inch of you is perfect. You are all I ever dream about.’
Joynes wept as she told jurors their baby was taken away from her hours after giving birth and she now only has limited access, three times a week.
She denies six counts of sexual activity with a child, including two while being a person in a position of trust.
Michael O’Brien, in his closing speech for the defence, said boy A had lied about what had taken place between him and Joynes while boy B had ‘put the boot in’ while being interviewed by detectives.
He said meeting students outside school was wrong, but not a criminal offence.
Mr O’Brien said boy A initially denied anything had happened, claiming it was all just ‘banter’ with his friends that got out of hand.
Mr O’Brien said after contact between boy A and Miss Joynes on Snapchat, the teenager had bragged to his friends that he was “going to shag” the teacher.
‘Would he lose face to his mates if he said, “Well, actually lads, I was told to sleep on the sofa”?’
And he said boy B had given ‘unclear and inconsistent answers’ to questions. He said Joynes and Boy B, were in a ‘perfectly legal relationship’ which the teenager had chosen to ‘twist the dates’ and ‘put the boot in’, to say sex began earlier when he was at school and aged 15.
The trial continues with the jury expected to retire on Thursday morning.
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