I have walked the darkest alleys of the city and witnessed the most wretched of dens, yet the horrors that hide behind the respectable facade of a schoolhouse are the most sinister of all. In a courtroom recently, a woman of some sixty-four years, one Sally-Anne Bowen, formerly a mistress of chemistry, stood before the magistrate to answer for crimes that would make a common rogue shudder.

For thirty long years, this woman walked the streets as a lady of standing, while her victims carried a burden of shame. One poor soul, whom we shall call Gareth to shield his name, stepped forward from the shadows. He told a harrowing tale of how this schoolmistress preyed upon his innocence, leading him into a web of vice. He spoke of acts of gross indecency, describing twenty or thirty such encounters, some of which occurred even within the rattling carriages of the underground railway—a place where the soot of the city clings to every surface.

Now, mark the audacity of the accused! The woman denies everything. She dares to plead a physical malady, claiming a biological deformity of her private parts rendered such intimacy an agony. A convenient shield, indeed, to hide a heart of stone.

But the plot thickens, as it always does in these sordid affairs. The constabulary has unearthed a second victim. This gentleman recalled how, as a lad of fourteen or fifteen, he was lured during the midday break to kiss the twenty-five-year-old mistress and touch her in ways that no decent schoolroom should ever permit.

Young Gareth testified that the woman was forced to flee her post when his own mother began to scent the foul air of impropriety. The defendant, however, maintains she departed the school merely to escape the 'unwanted attentions' that plague women of the teaching profession. A wretched lie, told with a straight face before the judge.

It seems this plague of corruption knows no borders; only recently, word reached us from the Americas, where a dance mistress in Delaware was likewise hauled before the law for the ravishment of two pupils through indecent letters and vile acts. It is a grim reminder that whether in the slums of London or the halls of learning, the predator wears many masks.