Female teacher Monique Ooms had secret sex with a 16-year old boy…but avoids jail

A female teacher who admitted having sex with her 16-year-old student in the backseat of her car has escaped jail after a judge ruled she was not a predator.

Monique Ooms, 31, from Maffra, was sentenced Friday by County Court of Victoria Judge John Smallwood to four years of community service, with 300 hours of community service for the crime.

She pleaded guilty this month in Latrobe Valley County Court in Victoria to four counts of sexual penetration of a child under her supervision and care.

Over 30 minutes, Judge Smallwood outlined the contributions to society that Ooms had made and the hardships she endured in the community after being exposed as a child molester.

The court heard that Ooms had been abused on the street by strangers and was fired from her job at a pharmacy and the local pub.

Her local Country Fire Association had given her the boot and the footy club no longer wanted a bar from her.

Ooms had received a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.

The court heard that the young victim of Ooms – who was just a few weeks short of turning 17 – had snuck out in the middle of the night to have sex with his then-school teacher.

The 16-year-old mourned the loss of a close friend who died in a fatal car accident the week before and was in an “emotionally fragile situation.”

But Judge Smallwood made it clear he didn’t believe Uncles was a sexual predator.

“I could say from the start that I don’t think this offense was predatory in any way,” he said.

“It was a completely inappropriate relationship that escalated. You were both aware of the legal wrongness of it all.’

While Judge Smallwood accepted that the crime carried a prison sentence, he said he had difficulty doing so because of the student’s age.

“This is a situation where the victim was within a month of his 17th birthday. Questions about the consent, the presumption of damage – all kinds of questions will be answered in a timely manner,” he said.

Judge Smallwood said he accepted that Uncles had repented for her transgression and learned the error of her ways.

“I accept that you now have an understanding of the potential dangers to your victim, if I may say so,” he said.

At a preliminary hearing earlier this month, Judge Smallwood said he had never heard a case involving a teacher where the child was not under the age of 16.

The experienced judge said he was concerned whether Ooms’ victim had actually been harmed by their illicit contacts.

“Often the damage in these situations is what comes from other people after it’s gone public,” he said.

Judge Smallwood said that while Ooms’s victim was a high school student, he was not a child under the age of 16.

‘There has clearly been discussion between him and her about the illegality of it. He agrees anyway and makes that very clear,” he said.

The student refused to be involved in legal proceedings, but his mother read emotional testimony in court.

She said she was concerned about her son’s future and how her family would overcome the inappropriate student-teacher relationship.

The court heard that the student had tried to defend his deranged abuser.

“She’s a very nice person and I’m sure she wasn’t trying to get me to try to be a predator or anything like that,” he told police after Ooms jumped up.

“And I believe she genuinely had feelings for me and I know I did. As much as it’s wrong, as much as I knew it felt wrong, I know she’s not like that… I never wanted it to end like this and I never wanted her to feel, to process it.”

Judge Smallwood further accepted that the treatment of Ooms by the general public, who were rightly disgusted by her antics, had served as punishment in itself.

“You get threatened in the street, you get yelled at and you get ridiculed — now that, especially in a country town, is a natural part of what’s going to happen when you’re accused of something as serious as this,” he said.

“It’s pretty clear that the level of abuse and slander for someone as vulnerable as you has, I have no doubt, led to further suicidal thoughts in the past few months.”

Judge Smallwood suggested Ooms was unlikely to survive prison because of her fragile mental state.

“I have no doubt that prison would be disastrous for you,” he said.

At the end of his sentence, Judge Smallwood expressed concern that he would say nothing further about his decision.

“I won’t say anything more in case I get myself into trouble,” he said.

Judge Smallwood previously said the crime Ooms committed was not having sex with the boy, but the fact that she was his teacher and that her crime was a breach of trust created by the law.

‘You use the word minor. Is he? I mean I don’t know. Those are the things that worry me,” he said at her preliminary hearing.

The court heard that Ooms had harassed her student in the weeks after his friend was killed in a car accident.

While the pair initially talked via social media and phone, Ooms was soon texting her college photos of herself in her underwear.

In July last year, the couple shared their first kiss and discussed all the things that were wrong with what happened.

The next time they met, the pair had sex in the back of Ooms’ car while parked in a forest at night.

The court heard that Ooms had sex with her student in the back seat of her car at least four times over the next few weeks before making appointments at her home.

Ooms’ grubby relationship was discovered when someone wrote two letters to the school principal, who promptly alerted the police.

While Ooms initially tried to deny her antics, she eventually confessed to the police after being tricked into confessing to a friend via text message.

The court heard when asked “You really did it, didn’t you?” she replied ‘Yes’.

Ooms now seems to have embraced her life as a tradie and has posted pictures of her wearing an Akubra and posing in front of a 4WD on her social media pages.

Ooms formally taught various subjects to high school students and had only attended the school for a year before the inappropriate relationship began.

The posts revealed that the pair repeatedly said they “missed” and “loved” each other, with Ooms claiming she had fallen in love with the student.

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