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High-school teacher walks free after admitting intercourse with her student (16)

The pair had sex several times at her home and in her car at various locations.

Yesterday at 12:40

An Australian high-school teacher who confessed to having sex with a 16-year-old student cried in court this week before walking free without facing a prison sentence.

Monique Ooms (31) returned before the Court of Appeal on Tuesday after prosecutors appealed her lack of jail time on child-abuse offences, was “manifestly inadequate”.

Ooms sobbed in the Court of Appeals in Melbourne after prosecutors upheld a ruling to only give her 300 hours of community service after she pleaded guilty to four counts of sexually penetrating a minor.

Ooms was a recently-qualified teacher at Sale Secondary College last year when she began exchanging messages with teenager in May after noticing the boy was going through personal problems.

Ooms initially offered the youngster messages of support but this quickly descended into her sending photos of herself in racy underwear to the victim.

The school boy snuck out of his home for an illicit meeting with his teacher for the first time two months later.

The pair had sex several times at her home and in her vehicle at various locations before someone got in touch with the boy’s school by sending an anonymous note.

Earlier this year Ooms pleaded guilty to four counts of sexually penetrating a child under her care and was sentenced in Court to a community corrections order with community work and counselling.

Surprisingly, the judge found that while the relationship was “utterly inappropriate”, he did not find Ooms’ conduct to be predatory.

“It was simply a situation where neither of you was thinking particularly straight and you were the one with the responsibility, not him,” he said.

The victim involved said his teacher was “very nice” and he thought she “genuinely had feelings for me”.

The ‘sex teacher’ has now been the subject of abuse in her neighbourhood and has reportedly received many threatening phone calls, forcing her to go into hiding.

Ooms’ legal team said she has been suffering from mental health issues and had fallen pregnant shortly after her sentence was handed down.

In their judgment, Judges Richard Niall, Maree Kennedy and Cameron Macaulay said they had not been persuaded the sentence imposed was inadequate.

“This was a difficult sentencing exercise,” they wrote.

“The offending was serious and, as the judge correctly noted, ordinarily a custodial sentence of some duration would be expected in order to fulfil the sentencing purposes.

“But the judge considered this to be a very unusual situation… It is a conspicuous example of a judge concerned to do individualised justice and to exercise the judicial sentencing discretion to do justice in the particular case,” they stated.

Ooms now works as a bricklayer.