Secret prison pregnancy of teacher who preyed on pupils

A "predatory" teacher found guilty today of sex offences involving two teenage boys was pregnant while in prison awaiting trial.

Rebecca Joynes, 30, had sex with two boys who had been her pupils at a Greater Manchester school. She was so brazen in her offending that while on bail accused of having sex with one boy, she began sleeping with another.

She would go on to have a child with that second boy. Jurors in her trial at Manchester Crown Court observed Joynes turning up at court with her daughter's pink bonnet tucked into the waistband of her trousers, reports the Manchester Evening News.

READ MORE: 'Predator' teacher leaves court hiding face after being found guilty of sex offences

READ MORE: Rebecca Joynes appeared to be a ‘nice quiet’ girl from a leafy village but was hiding a dark secret

But there was one thing the jury wasn’t told. And that was that Joynes spent much of that pregnancy locked up in HMP Styal, just outside Manchester.

Joynes spent her own youth in Thingwall, a leafy village in Wirral. She had been through the prestigious Teach First programme, which aims to fight social disadvantage in the country by recruiting future leaders in education.

Everything suggested she would have a successful career ahead of her. Instead, she found herself on remand, carrying her teenage victim’s baby, locked up with some of the region’s most vulnerable and heavily convicted women.

Joynes first appeared before Manchester Crown Court in August 2022, accused of two counts of engaging in sexual activity with a child - that child being her first victim.

She pleaded not guilty, and was granted bail, with one condition being that she did not have unsupervised contact with anyone under the age of 18, reports the Manchester Evening News.

Not every suspected sex offender gets bail. It means people accused of serious offences can live a relatively normal life until their case comes up at court. It’s most often granted to people who appear to pose no risk to the public, people whose reputation indicates that they can be trusted.

But, instead of living a normal life, it seems Joynes had only one thing on her mind. Boys. Schoolboys. One particular boy, another of her students, who she was soon texting.

It was him who made the first, crude, teenage fumbling attempt at flirtation after weeks of banal Snapchat chit-chat with the woman who taught him, saying, "Get your t*ts out".

Joynes didn’t hesitate. It was the moment she had been waiting for, sending a picture of her bottom. Soon he was caught in her twisted web.

After evidence of these further offences came to light, Joynes was remanded into custody to await her trial. She was now a serial offender. A woman who had manipulated two boys, slept with both of them, preying on the second while awaiting justice for preying on the first.

She would admit breaching her bail while giving evidence at the trial which followed. But she still didn’t seem all that sorry.

Asked about the ‘risk’ of breaching her bail when she began speaking with her second victim on Snapchat, Joynes said: “We had spoken about that. It was stupid, I did breach the bail conditions. I have to pay for that and I paid for that.”

Joynes' case was originally due to be heard in November last year. But the case was adjourned due to a lack of court time, and she ended up getting out of jail, by now with weeks to go before her due date.

In January, she gave birth to a baby girl - one who could have no idea of the circumstances in which she was conceived, and little contact with the mother who, instead of enjoying the previous first few months of her life, was standing before a jury at Manchester Crown Court, fighting for her reputation and her liberty.

That fight failed. Following the guilty verdicts, Joynes now faces a possible lengthy jail sentence. The maximum sentence for engaging in sexual activity with a child is 14 years in prison.

It represents a remarkable fall from grace for a woman who had once occupied a trusted role. She had been suspended when the allegations against the first boy came to light, and was ultimately sacked from her post in July last year.

Her defence team tried to argue that the charges she faced in respect of the second boy, two counts of having sexual activity with a child while being a person in a position of trust, should be thrown out. They argued that Joynes was suspended from her job at the time of the allegations, so the position of trust no longer applied.

But the trial judge disagreed and said she was still bound by the rules and obligations of her post, and she was still being paid while suspended. The judge said Joynes could have resigned, but pointed out that she didn’t.

Joynes would say in the trial that teaching was her ‘dream job’. The route started with the Teach First social enterprise programme in 2018. She followed up a sport and exercise degree with a postgraduate degree in teaching, before going on to teach maths, commuting to the job at a Greater Manchester secondary from her flat in Salford Quays.

Now, after losing her career, she has now lost her good name and faces the prospect of being sent back to prison - this time for much longer.

The trial had heard Joynes had groomed the first boy, Boy A, with a Trafford Centre shopping trip before taking him back to her flat in Salford and having sex with him while he was aged 15.

CCTV footage showed them in the shopping centre, with Joynes buying him a £345 Gucci belt at the luxury brand’s concession in Selfridges. Further footage showed them entering her flat later that day.

Joynes denied that any sexual activity took place between them. When the allegations came to light and the police became involved, Joynes was charged and appeared in court.

With the second victim, she waited until he was 16 before having sex with him - although she first kissed him, at her flat, when he was just 15.

Prosecutors said the kissing when the boy was 15 was a criminal offence. They also said the sex was also illegal because Joynes was in a position of trust, being a teacher.

It is a crime for a teacher to have sex with a pupil who is under the age of 18, who attends the school where they work. Joynes had denied wrongdoing, relying on the fact that sex with the second victim came after the boy turned 16 and after she had been sacked.

But it wasn’t enough to save her from becoming one of the grim minority of teachers - including a number of young women - who have been convicted of preying on pupils.

She liked, she admitted in her trial, the attention of the boys she taught, some of whom nicknamed her ‘Bunda Becky’ - a reference to her bottom.

But her warped exploitation of two of them attracted the attention of the country - as her case went viral, not just in traditional media, but across TikTok, the social media site so popular with the teenage lads she was obsessed with.

Don't miss the biggest and breaking stories by signing up to the Echo Daily newsletter here