A SCHOOLGIRL allegedly abducted to France by her married maths teacher has told a court he came with her because he feared she might commit suicide.

The girl was aged 15 when she started a sexual relationship with Scots-born Jeremy Forrest, 30, after developing a crush on him at Bishop Bell Church of England School in Eastbourne, East Sussex.

Fearing they were about to be exposed, Mr Forrest booked them on a cross-Channel ferry from Dover to Calais on September 20 last year before spending seven days on the run in France.

The girl, now 16, said she had been experiencing personal problems in the months up to the relationship with the teacher. This included her mother going through a divorce and then her mother falling pregnant with a new partner.

The court heard the pair agreed to go to France after the girl had her phone seized by police investigating rumours of a relationship between them.

The girl said she planned to run away but Mr Forrest, who is originally from Inverurie, Aberdeenshire, agreed to go with her to prevent her from getting into danger. She said: "He tried to persuade me not to run away."

She added: "I said I was going and nobody was going to stop me.

"I was very determined and once I had an idea in my head nobody was going to stop me, not Jeremy, not anybody."

The girl continued: "He was concerned that if I went on my own I would be in danger, it would be a better idea if he came with me. I was very pleased."

The girl added: "If Jeremy had said he wasn't coming with me, I would have dreaded what kind of situation I would have been in."

Describing her mood at the time, she said: "I felt very low indeed, I didn't know what to do, I was very desperate."

When asked if she felt suicidal by defence counsel Ronald Jaffa, the girl, who chose yesterday to give her evidence in court for the first time rather than by videolink, replied yes.

The girl said she started to develop a crush on him after he helped her with her personal problems. She said it was during a school trip to Los Angeles in February 2012 she began to confide in him. She said he would try to get her to seek help from school counsellors or external support services.

The girl said: "He was very encouraging to get help and seemed very worried about it and didn't want to let the situation go, he really wanted to do something about it."

She added that among her problems was a tendency to have suicidal thoughts. She said that since Mr Forrest began to give her advice and support, her attendance and grades at school had improved.

The girl had previously fallen in with a bad drug taking crowd. She said she was often in detention after school.

She said: "On the way back I was sat next to Jeremy. I remembered he had been nice to me, I thought it would be a good way to relieve any anxiety or stress."

The girl told the court Mr Forrest repeatedly asked her to return home but she refused. She said: "He was saying 'This isn't going to end very well' but if I was insisting things could happen to me as a result of this, we had to go."

She added: "Numerous times on the way to France he would say he would give me the money so I could go home but I didn't want to go home."

The girl said Mr Forrest was in tears as they drove to France. She said she felt she had to run away because she did not want her mother to find out about a previous relationship as well as other personal issues she had been going through.

Mr Forrest, of Petts Wood, Kent, denies child abduction and the case continues.