Abduction victim 'Gemma' says crime is actually a love story 'Gemma' in a video interview for The Sun. Picture: Screengrab Source: Getty Images Jeremy Forrest. (Photo by Dan Dennison/Getty Images) Source: Getty Images THE teenage girl who ran away with a teacher twice her age has given a series of interviews about the "genuine, true love" they shared to UK paper The Sun - but the truth is much more sinister. Many of us can remember her real name from the desperate reports and the frantic bulletins broadcast when she first disappeared from home with her teacher. Back then, there was a photograph of her smiling into the camera as a pretty bridesmaid at a wedding; all dimples and ringlets and the rest of her life unfurling before her like a peachy ribbon. Of course, all that has changed. Not quite so many carefree smiles today - and the ribbon is tattered and torn. Also, we now know to call her Gemma, the identity she adopted when she was on the run in France. For at the age of 15, Gemma had vanished in the night with Jeremy Forrest - her lover, her teacher, her 30-year-old abductor. And now, as he languishes in jail after being found guilty of child abduction and five counts of sexual activity with a child, she has decided to tell her side of the story. "This is genuine, true love," insists Gemma, who is now 16, with all the weight of the world on her shoulders. Like most of us once were, she is an adolescent who has barely made a dent in the custard skin of life, but who still believes she knows it all. Her version of events tries to stitch a lovely, romantic narrative onto what is as clear-cut, contemptible case of abuse and sexually predacious behaviour as is possible. She said that "The Sun has allowed me to have my say about what really happened and put certain things to rest," but this is no love story. Gemma was taken advantage of by someone who should have known better, but that is not how it seems to her. "Jeremy is not a paedophile," she says, and she is right - but he is a disgrace to teaching and a disgusting opportunist. "I know my own mind," she continues. I was fully capable of deciding what I wanted and so was he. We both wanted the same things. She insists that she was the one who initiated sex with Forrest; she was the one who suggested they run away; she was the one who groomed him, not the other way around. Now she wants to wait for him until he finishes his prison sentence and then have his children. She sees a future in which they will live happily ever after, perhaps even with roses around the cottage door and the constant chirp of bluebirds in the air. She regrets that they were caught only because she was jealous of a 'flirty barmaid' who lured Forrest to an interview with offers of work. That's why she went along to his interview for a bar job in France, when both were apprehended by the police and their adventure came to an end. Well, doesn't that say it all? It is almost touching how Gemma is doing her best to protect Forrest, to persuade the world of the sincerity of their affair and convince doubters of her maturity. Yet the repeated insistence that it was all her fault and not his is heart-breaking. In truth, everything she says only underlines the fact that Gemma is hopelessly immature, perhaps even slightly troubled, and definitely incapable of making judicious choices about her future. Jeremy Forrest is escorted to a waiting prison van outside Lews Crown Court on June 21, 2013 in Lewes, England. Forrest, 30, was sentenced to five and half years in prison after being found guilty by a jury of the abduction a 15 year old female pupil, with whom he was having a relationship and disappeared with to France for over a week last September. My sympathies are entirely with her. She has been a very silly girl, she is certainly more sinned against than sinning - but she still does not understand. Nothing she can say or do stops Forrest from being an abductor. The law is structured in such a way that you cannot consent to sexual activity if you are a minor, neither can you consent to run away to France with your lover. A lover who happens to be a grown man twice your age, a man who should have known better and whose breach of trust was serious and life-changing. For both of them. The law exists to protect girls such as Gemma - sometimes even from themselves. But it is too late to stop her first experience of love and sex being with an adult who was supposed to be looking after her. The affair and subsequent court case has also devastated her family life, which had already been "very unsettled" during her childhood. Sadly, she has become estranged from her mother, who attended court during Forrest's trial, but did not speak to Gemma. She has said: "The daughter I know is dead ... someone got to my child. I never saw it coming or realised it was happening. I feel like the worst mother in the world. In marked contrast to this maternal despair, Gemma's biological father (she lives with her stepfather) has said he would welcome Forrest into the family as a son-in-law. I'd like to visit him in prison, shake his hand and say: 'Thanks for looking after my daughter.' I would be nice to him," he has said. These mixed parental messages cannot help. But Gemma is determined to protect her man. The Sun have so far released four stories from Gemma's point of view about their relationship. There are poignant pictures of the teenager staring out to sea. Her bare, pale legs look cold in her short, grey, school skirt. From this back view, we can see that her hair has been scrupulously straightened into flat hanks with hot irons; just the way millions of other young girls insist upon. In the video her face is pixelated. She wears a denim jacket, High Street clothes and her fingernails look bitten. Her voice is modulated and even, and she sounds like a nice, intelligent, educated girl. The kind of girl who should be giggling with her friends, swooning over Justin Bieber, going to school proms and making the usual humdrum teenage mistakes. Not giving newspaper interviews in which she tries to defend her adult boyfriend against the indefensible. Not trying to protect the teacher who has so utterly wronged her. Not desperately trying to be a grown-up when the eyes of the world are upon her. I first kissed Jeremy in his classroom. I was really nervous about it, but after it happened it confirmed a lot of my feelings for him. It was a completely genuine kiss, completely mutual. We both felt the same," she says. Can a kiss 'confirm' anything? Only if you are a love-struck teenage girl. Beneath the thin membrane of Gemma's desperate sophistication, you can see her little red heart beating like a sparrow's. She is in the grip of her teenage crush. Gemma sees only hearts and flowers. In her version of events, she and Forrest bonded in class detention. He was always giving her detention for bad behaviour, she says, particularly wearing nail polish, which was against school rules. She usually didn't bother to turn up, but when she did go, he played the kind of music she liked and that was the start of it all. Later, on the pair's infamous school trip to Los Angeles when they were caught holding hands, Forrest told her that he and his wife were not happy. When he heard Gemma was bulimic, he gave her a hug. She saw all this as proof of his love and affection. Forrest and his wife. Yet ask yourself this. What kind of teacher tells a 14-year-old pupil that he is not speaking to his wife? Gives her detention for bad behaviour then plays love songs to her? A predator. The truth is plain to see. Forrest deliberately targeted Gemma and contrived to spend time with her privately. He could see that she liked him and he used that to his advantage. He is, and was, an opportunist of the worst sort. Gemma just cannot see this. Any responsible teacher would make it his - or her - duty to quash any nascent signs of a teenage crush. To put the girl out of her misery and take pains to stop her believing that there was the slimmest prospect of a romance. To keep a proper distance. Forrest did none of these things. You can see his grooming as clear as day; his plodding footsteps marching across the forbidden sand, onwards, onwards towards his young and vulnerable pupil. "I do think if it is wanted, then it will last," Gemma says towards the end of her newspaper interview. Is that a note of doubt? She also insists that "you can't stop your feelings." Maybe she cannot - and perhaps she shouldn't be expected to - but Forrest certainly should. She sounds very determined about waiting for him until he comes out of jail, even though they have not spoken for nine months. You know, it would be kinder of him to do the right thing. To tell her not to wait and not to allow this to become the defining experience of her life. To put all this behind her and move on. But don't hold your breath. More: The Interviews Gemma: Why I won't testify Gemma: How I fell for Jeremy Forrest Gemma: We got caught because I was jealous of a flirty barmaid Gemma: I groomed him, and now I want his babies