A 25-year-old female teacher has been jailed for one year for having sex with one of her underage students. He was just 16 at the time.
She said she thought that was the age of consent. The judge Justice Martin Nolan told her she should have known it wasn’t and could easily have found out if she was unsure.
The secondary school teacher told the court that she was truly sorry for what happened and accepts full responsibility.
She pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Circuit Court to two counts of defilement in March 2018.
The woman was 23 when she met the boy in a nightclub two years ago. He was 15 years old and a student in the secondary school where she worked as a substitute teacher.
The court heard they chatted and she hugged him in the club. They continued to chat in school and through SnapChat.
Her sentence hearing heard she bought him a gift for his 16th birthday and had sex with him for the first time on that date.
She booked a room for them in a hotel two weeks later where they had sex for a second time.
When the boy’s mother found out he was in a relationship with his teacher, she went straight to the school before reporting it to Gardaí.
The woman, who’s now 25, accepts full responsibility for what happened and said she was truly sorry for what she did.
She said she was naive and has since been disqualified from teaching.
Through his Victim Impact Statement, the court heard the boy developed psychological problems and life-threatening anxiety after the relationship.
A report stated that she did not groom the boy for her own sexual gratification, that he initiated sexual contact and she was flattered by it.
