A devout Christian with a glittering career ahead, so why did Helen Goddard throw it away with a lesbian affair with a pupil?

By Rachel Porter for MailOnline and Punteha Yazdanian
Updated: 19:33 EST, 21 August 2009

Accused: Helen Goddard has admitted the lesbian affair with her pupil and is due to the sentenced next month

Chatting happily over coffees in a central London cafe, they looked like two school friends.

The girl in uniform was just a teenager and the other looked no older. But she was, in fact, 26, and her companion was not a friend but a pupil.

Perhaps at first to Helen Goddard these meetings seemed harmless enough. A quick coffee after a trumpet lesson with a student she got along well with - it might be inappropriate, but it is not a crime.

But as she knows only too well, what happened next most certainly is, and now she must face the consequences.

The music teacher, known as 'The Jazz Lady' to pupils at the £13,000-a-year City of London School for Girls, this week admitted to a lesbian relationship with her underage pupil and pleaded guilty to six charges of sexual activity with a child.

Through these coffee shop trysts, their friendship became a full-blown secret affair.

It broke the law, it broke the trust that parents place in their children's schools, it broke the boundaries that are sacred to teacher-pupil relationships.

And, as her confused and broken-hearted father says: 'It has destroyed her life, her brilliant career and everything she has worked so hard to achieve.'

As she awaits her sentence, her closest friend reveals that, while Goddard accepts she has 'done something wrong' and will take full responsibility for the affair, she also believes - with a naivety that some will say beggars belief - that there is some injustice in being 'punished for falling in love' and 'desperately wants people to understand her situation'.

An exceptionally gifted musician, she found herself falling in love with the girl - and, like a love-struck teenager herself, it seems she simply let it happen.

The girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, believes that she too has fallen in love and, as the court heard, hopes the relationship will continue after her 16th birthday.

But of course, that will prove difficult if Goddard is behind bars - a prospect that is said to terrify her. Sentencing is set for September 21.

The fact that their relationship was consensual will not necessarily affect the judge's decision.

Ordering her to sign the sex offenders' register this week, Judge Anthony Pitt said that he was not 'making any promises or giving any indications as to a sentence'.

When he makes his decision she may plead for understanding, but has no right to expect it.

Her best hope is that she is treated, not as a paedophile, but as someone who has made an inexcusably stupid mistake.

Helen Goddard's ex-boyfriend Jonathan Ansell (centre front) is said to be 'very surprised' at what has happened

Speaking to the Mail at her childhood home - a semi-detached house in a quiet and leafy street near the centre of Farnborough in Hampshire - Goddard's father Paul, 50, expressed his shock and bitter disappointment that the bright future that always seemed to lie ahead of his daughter has been so suddenly and completely extinguished.

Whether she is sent to prison or not, she will not be allowed to teach again.

'With this mistake, she has irreparably damaged her career and her life,' he says.

'Helen's going to lose everything she has worked so hard to achieve, which is a terrible shame. She's is such a talented musician and now all her skills could be wasted.

'She was a "natural" when it came to teaching and it is such a pity to have thrown that away when she had such gifts to pass on.'

Mr Goddard, a full-time musician, adds: 'Choosing to have a relationship with a young pupil was obviously a mistake, but I understand it was always consensual.'

This, he says, is proof that she would 'never be a danger to her pupils and doesn't deserve to have her name on the sex offenders' register'. But the law - and most parents - don't make that distinction.

Goddard's friend says: 'It's not an excuse, but I think the pupil is mature for her age, and Helen is perhaps less so. Maybe that's why they clicked.'

There is no doubt that the softly spoken and devoutly Christian Goddard is an unlikely woman to find herself cast in the role of sexual predator.

And those who know her best are even more stunned that she has been having a lesbian relationship.

She is known to have had several boyfriends, including Jonathan Ansell, the tenor who found fame as one quarter of G4, the operatic boyband.

Helen Goddard has lost her job at the City of London School for Girls

Ansell, now a successful solo artist who is due to marry his fiance, TV presenter Debbie King, in a fortnight, was said to be 'very surprised' at reading about Goddard's disgrace in the papers this week.

They lived in the same student halls of residence five years ago when she attended Trinity College of Music and he attended Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.

'They dated for a short while,' confirms a friend of Ansell's. 'It was just a casual student relationship.'

Goddard's arrest in July was the first her father and mother, Yvonne, a 51-year-old City accountant, knew of the relationship with the girl.

But according to a source close to the case, 'the school was abuzz with gossip' about it, and the arrest came after the headmistress was informed.

When police and social workers arrived at the house of Goddard's lover, they were told that she was out.

She was at Goddard's flat in Greenwich, South London, which she shares with a female flatmate.

'The following day,' says the source, '[the girl] disclosed the relationship to her mother.'

It is unknown whether the girl's parents support their daughter's decision to continue her relationship with Goddard.

Mr Goddard says his daughter has had no contact with the pupil since her arrest five weeks ago.

It was a decision she made on holiday with her parents in Portugal, after her initial arrest.

Friends say Goddard is heartbroken at being separated from her.

Mr Goddard, however, says it is a shame she didn't come to that decision before she got herself into this mess.

It's a sentiment no doubt echoed by many, including the school's headmistress, Diana Vernon, who dispatched an emergency text message to all 700 sets of parents to inform them that an 'inappropriate relationship' had been reported to the police.

As any father would be, Mr Goddard is devastated to see his daughter's life in tatters.

As a member of the Salvation Army and a devout Christian, he brought his children up to believe in God and to serve their community.

Helen, who attended local Catholic primary and secondary schools, is known to neighbours as a quiet girl who never failed to return home from London at Christmas to play carols on the trumpet at her local church.

She also played a charity concert in Salisbury on Good Friday. Her brother David had arranged the score.

Understandably bewildered by how it all could have gone so wrong, Mr Goddard says quietly: 'We gave her and her brother great childhoods, filled with opportunities to develop their innate musical talents, so that they could both get great jobs and have great lives.

'They both did - David is in a band and Helen has achieved a hell of a lot for someone of her age.'

She is thought to be staying with her brother. Indeed, it is not hard to find evidence of Helen's extraordinary talent.

She was considered a prodigious musical talent from an early age, playing the trumpet in an under-18s orchestra and the Hampshire County Youth Band.

She performed for Her Majesty at the Royal Albert Hall, and played for audiences in Lebanon and the Far East.

The pinnacle of her playing career came in 2000, at 17, when she was one of five young British musicians chosen to perform at the opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympic Games.

'She has always been hugely talented and we are immensely proud of her musical achievements,' says her father.

Sadly, they have been overshadowed by this massive error of judgment.

She paid her own way through a four-year Bachelor of Music degree at Trinity where, as president of the Student Union and co-founder of the Repertoire Orchestra, she was a model student.

'I remember dropping her off at university where she was involved with a boyfriend, and thinking how happy she was,' says her father.

Leaving court this week, with her girlish face hidden behind large aviator shades and a sweep of dyed blonde hair, her angular six-and-a-half-stone frame shrouded in a black suit, she looked like a child herself.

Friends say she behaves younger than her years too, as a result of a sheltered upbringing, heavily involved with the church and her music.

Her father admits that, compared to some of the girls she taught at school, she would have seemed immature.

'Take the students at Helen's school. They look and act like 24-year-olds and some of them look a lot more grownup than she does. These days, girls develop mentally and physically far quicker than they used to.

'I'm not condoning her actions. She was in a position of trust and shouldn't have done what she did.'

But it does beg the question - did she ever have the capacity to be the responsible adult in the room?

Her father, although supportive of her, seems to doubt it.

'She was in a highly responsible job and shouldered a lot of responsibility. It may be that she wasn't emotionally ready for such a demanding position, and may have turned to this girl for comfort.'

It could be an explanation of sorts, but it comes nowhere close to an excuse and he knows it.

'She's old enough now to take responsibility for her actions, including stupid ones like this,' he says.

That is why he won't be in court to see her sentenced next month.

'I won't be there to hold her hand. She is old enough to fight her own battles. She has lived away from home for some time and values her independence.'

In fact, she lives in a two-bedroom flat on a fairly run-down estate in Greenwich, which her parents helped her to buy after she landed the job at City of London School three years ago.

Having lost her job and with no prospect of teaching again regardless of whether she is jailed or not, she might be forced to sell her home.

Because of her precarious financial position, she has given up her dog - a one-year-old beagle puppy - which her neighbours occasionally saw her walking.

Her parents, who until a month ago never had any reason to doubt that she was anything other than a perfect daughter, admit that - with a criminal conviction and her name on the sex offenders' register - they fear for her future.

They are still reeling from the news she is gay. Mr Goddard says simply that he is 'quite conservative and this lesbian business is over my head'.

Displaying a certain naivety of his own, Mr Goddard, who married at 20, adds: 'I can't help but think that if she'd been in a proper relationship or married when she started this job, she would never have been tempted like this.

'All I can say is that Helen and her friend enjoy each other's company, which is what most relationships are about, be it boy-girl or girl-girl.'

But this is not, in the eyes of the law, a girl-girl relationship. It is one between a girl and a teacher who should have known better - much better.

The maximum sentence for the crimes Goddard has admitted is 14 years in prison.

Her friends and family pray the judge will be lenient after reading the many letters that have been submitted in support of her previous good character.

One thing is certain: she is already paying a heavy price for her devastating error of judgment.