HE was around 20 when a familiar-looking man sat opposite him on the Tube.
After some small talk, Gareth realised the man was a former schoolmate, a couple of years older, who appeared to recognise him too.
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Leaning across the carriage, he brought up the attractive chemistry teacher who had singled Gareth out when he was just 14.
Then, shortly before leaving the train, he delivered five words that would stay with him.
“You’re not the only one.”
The former pupil, known only as Gareth, was stunned. Until then, part of him had believed Sally-Anne Bowen had selected him because he was special.
At 14, he would walk Bowen home from school, climb the stairs to her bedroom and spend afternoons there, feeling like a “kid in a sweetshop”.
“She’s got 900 kids there and she selects me,” he recalled in the Tortoise podcast Lucky Boy, which detailed his allegations. “I thought I was something special.”
Now, nearly four decades after Bowen first singled him out, the 65-year-old former teacher has been found guilty of seven counts of indecent assault against Gareth and another teenage pupil.
When his contact with Bowen ended abruptly after around six months, Gareth’s behaviour deteriorated so badly that his school asked him to leave. Soon afterwards, his mother told him to move out and, by the age of 16, he was homeless and self-harming.
By 23, he had tried to take his own life three times.
Yet for years Gareth continued to regard Bowen as a former girlfriend, blaming himself for pursuing her and even feeling guilty that their involvement might have cost her career, he explains in the podcast.
His view changed when his adopted son reached 14. Looking at a boy who still had dimples and wanted to play Xbox, Gareth understood how young he himself had been.
“This woman wasn’t your girlfriend, mate,” he recalled thinking. “She was sick.”
Gareth and his wife began contacting former pupils who might corroborate his story and show that what happened between him and Bowen had been an open secret.
He also looked her up online and discovered she was still teaching, despite his mother allegedly having been assured she would never work in a classroom again.
Warnings about Bowen’s behaviour had reached Christ’s College before she left in 1988.
The court heard that Gareth’s mother contacted the school after discovering her son was involved with a teacher. Richard Luker, then head of science and Bowen’s supervisor, recalled waiting in the headmaster’s office for her call and being told she feared Gareth planned to travel abroad with Bowen.
Gareth claims Bowen later told him that senior staff knew about their relationship and had decided not to renew her contract. His mother says the school assured her Bowen would never teach again.
Yet Bowen was not reported to police or the teaching authorities and was instead given a reference by Christ’s College, allowing her to work at more than a dozen other schools, the podcast reveals.
The Lucky Boy investigation also uncovered claims that staff had deliberately kept concerns quiet.
One former teacher said women in the English department had been unhappy about Bowen’s interest in a 14-year-old boy and had tried to intervene, while another source claimed those who knew had kept the information within a “tight circle”.
“There’s a closing of ranks then and now,” one former member of staff told the podcast. “If they allowed Ms Bowen to go on and teach for 35 years, that’s awful.”
Christ’s College has not apologised to Gareth or issued a public statement following Bowen’s teaching ban and conviction.
Gareth reported Bowen to police in 2014, but former teachers and pupils failed to corroborate his account and the initial investigation ended without charges. He appealed against the decision and pursued a judicial review, but in 2020 was told the criminal case would go no further.
Despite pursuing Bowen, his feelings about her remained deeply conflicted. Asked what he would do if he ever saw her again, Gareth said he might want to hug or kiss her, or even have sex with her, while part of him might want to hit her or simply cry.
“How f***ed up’s that?” he asked.
Gareth also referred Bowen to the Teaching Regulation Agency in March 2018. Its online misconduct hearing began in November 2022 and stretched over several months, bringing the pair face-to-face for the first time in 34 years.
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Bowen said it was a “huge relief” to defend herself after living with what she called Gareth’s lies for eight-and-a-half years. She described him as an aggressive “pest” with an unreciprocated crush and insisted she had only ever been friendly towards him.
She denied that Gareth had entered her house or bedroom, branding the suggestion “rubbish” and “impossible”.
But under questioning, Bowen admitted being flattered by compliments from 14 and 15-year-old pupils and acknowledged that she regularly sat with Gareth on the bus, despite previously telling police they had spoken there only once or twice.
The panel also questioned why she had previously described Gareth as aggressive and unpleasant when she now said he had been friendly and pleasant towards her.
Gareth said he recognised the expressions and mannerisms Bowen used while giving evidence. At one point he broke protocol and addressed her directly.
“You know the truth,” he told her. “We do know the truth, Sally-Anne, and you know you had sex with me on multiple occasions.”
He then pleaded: “Cleanse your soul, man. Don’t take that s*** with you. Just own it. Own it.”
According to Gareth, Bowen stared back without flinching.
In December 2023, the three-person panel found his testimony “consistent and convincing”, concluding that Bowen had met him outside school, allowed him into her home and engaged in sexual activity with him.
As the findings were read over a final video call, and heard in the podcast, Bowen got up and walked away from her laptop. She was banned from teaching indefinitely the following month.
After the ruling was published, former Christ’s College pupils began sharing it online and trying to identify Gareth. During the subsequent Tortoise investigation, a message was posted in an alumni WhatsApp group searching for another boy Gareth remembered seeing near Bowen’s home.
A man known as Sanjay responded and, after months of hesitation, told the podcast that he too had been involved sexually with the teacher.
Sanjay alleged that Bowen kissed him and allowed him to touch her breasts and put his hand near her crotch during school lunch breaks. His evidence later formed part of the reopened criminal case and Bowen was charged with eight counts of indecent assault involving the two men.
Nearly four decades after they attended Christ’s College Finchley, Gareth and Sanjay gave evidence against their former teacher at Harrow Crown Court.
Gareth told jurors that, while aged 14, he had sex with Bowen “about 20 or 30 times” over several months.
Prosecutor Madeleine Wolfe said the issue was not whether the boys had appeared “flattered, willing or besotted”.
“Young as she was, she was not their peer, and she was not entitled to treat them as if they were adults capable of entering into sexual relationships with her,” she told the jury.
Gareth said the turning point came at a café near the school, where pupils were looking at a pornographic magazine they had stolen from a shop.
After his friends left, Bowen allegedly asked for the magazine and began flicking through it beneath the table. Stopping at a picture of a naked blonde woman, she pointed at the model and told the 14-year-old: “That’s what my pussy looks like.”
Gareth said he began walking Bowen home afterwards and later visited her bedroom.
The court also heard that Bowen openly sexualised her chemistry lessons and flashed her underwear at pupils.
Former pupil Tobias Oliver said she dressed and behaved more like his teenage female friends than a teacher, comparing her classroom antics to “a Sabrina Carpenter video”.
He recalled Bowen chewing the ends of her hair or cardigan and brushing a hand over her breasts as she spoke to pupils.
On one occasion, Oliver claimed, she sat on a raised desk, caught the boys’ attention and slowly opened her legs, allowing them to see up her skirt and glimpse her underwear.
When a pupil brought what Oliver believed was a copy of the Kama Sutra into another lesson, Bowen allegedly discussed different sexual positions, revealed which she had tried and asked the teenagers what they had tried.
Oliver also claimed that, before one lesson, he saw a pupil with his hands on Bowen’s breasts at the top of a staircase. Although she told him to stop, he said she was giggling and spoke in a playful rather than disciplinary manner.
Bowen denied flirting with pupils, telling the court: “I was just friendly.”
She added: “I wanted to be liked and had a lot of attention.”
Bowen had been charged with eight counts of indecent assault. During the trial, the judge directed the jury to acquit her of one count involving Sanjay because the allegation did not meet the legal threshold for indecent assault.
Jurors found her guilty of all seven remaining counts, six involving Gareth and one involving Sanjay, after deliberating for six hours and 29 minutes.
Bowen showed no emotion as the majority verdicts were returned. Releasing her on bail, the judge warned she could receive a custodial sentence on November 20.
She will also be placed on the sex offenders register.
Gareth welcomed the verdict but said it could not change what had happened to him as a teenager.
“She’s still the first woman I had sex with,” he told The Observer. “I don’t get to change that. And I don’t get a rerun to do my education again.”
He said his experiences had also affected his children.
“That’s what these people do,” he added. “And the people that survive it have to carry all that through their lives.”