A female teacher who was spared jail despite admitting to having sex with her 16-year-old student in the backseat of her car remains free despite community outcry.
Monique Ooms, 31, of Maffra, was sentenced on March 24 by Victoria County Court Judge John Smallwood to a four-year community correction, with 300 hours of community service for the crime.
That verdict was immediately appealed by Victoria’s Office of Public Prosecutions amid allegations that the judge was wrong.
Monique Ooms takes care of her ‘baby belly’. At a plea hearing, she had claimed to be infertile
Monique Ooms, 31, from Maffra has repeatedly had sex with her young student. She became pregnant shortly after her sentence
On Tuesday, the High Court of the Victoria Court of Appeal rejected the appeal, allowing Ooms to walk free again and her costs paid.
Uncles sat in the dock with a supporter’s hand on her shoulder and began to cry when the decision was made.
In rendering their verdict, Justices Richard Niall, Maree Kennedy and Cameron Macaulay found that Ooms was entitled to clemency due to a mental condition that they agreed contributed to her offence.
In our opinion, having regard to the seriousness of the crime, the personal affairs of the accused and the proper application of the sentence, the sentence imposed by the judge, while mild and perhaps merciful, was not wholly beyond the scope of the sentence. decisions that are reasonably open to him,” said the judges.
The court had heard that Ooms was depressed because she was infertile when she decided to put her victim to bed.
But in July it was revealed that she had become pregnant the week she was sentenced by Victoria County Court.
Ooms had pleaded guilty to four counts of sexual penetration of a child under her supervision and care at Latrobe Valley County Court in Victoria.
Her attorney Jason Gullaci, SC told the Court of Appeal that Ooms’ pregnancy was the “most important factor” in her final defense.
Psychological reports submitted at Oom’s hearing claimed that the sex offender was in a “fragile mental state” around the time of the crime.
“The respondent found out she was infertile, which increased her own vulnerability to the irrational thinking she was prone to because of a slew of mental illnesses she suffered from,” the court heard.
Psychologist Megan Rodgers claimed that Ooms “experienced a high degree of personal vulnerability, which led her to make poor decisions about the nature of the relationship with the victim.”
Dr. Suzanne Williams believed that Ooms’ low self-esteem and poor sense of self contributed significantly to immature and poor judgment in making relationship decisions.
Monique Ooms leaves the High Court in Melbourne on Tuesday
Ooms had used her own miserable upbringing to convince psychologists that she was not responsible for her perverted actions.
The court heard her had been raped in 2018 and engaged in several relationships with men that involved “some degree of humiliation or abuse.”
The judges accepted that because of her childhood difficulties, Ooms had a complex post-traumatic stress disorder, diagnosed with bipolar disorder, extreme anxiety and extreme depression.
“The judge ruled that the set of circumstances that led to her violation resulted in an ‘unusual situation’,” the Court of Appeal ruled.
“Her risk of relapse was low and her rehabilitation was already underway. Taking all considerations into account, we are not convinced that the four-year community order with its harsh conditions was, in all the circumstances of this particular case, a manifestly inadequate sentence.’
During her first sentence, the 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.”
The court heard that Ooms had harassed her student in the weeks after his friend was killed.
While the pair initially talked via social media and phone, Ooms texted 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 arranging appointments at her home.
Monique Ooms informed her judge that she could not become pregnant. Then she did
Ooms was tricked by police into entering into a text exchange with a friend in which she made confessions
The 31-year-old appears to have embraced her new traditional life, posting pictures of herself wearing an Akubra for a 4WD on her social media.
The former teacher (right) had contacted the student after noticing he was more withdrawn and offered her Instagram account, and later her phone number
Ooms’ sordid relationship came to light 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’.
In filing the appeal, Crown Prosecutor Elizabeth Ruddle argued that Ooms should have been jailed for using her good character to get a teaching job in the first place.
She further claimed Judge Smallwood might have acted differently if the accused teacher had been a man.
“One thing that strikes me when you read[Judge Smallwood’s]grounds is that if you swapped the genders of the plaintiff and the perpetrator, some of the rulings would be quite concerning, for example around the lack of presumption of harm,” said them against the Court of Justice. Appeal.
“This is a serious crime, multiple times, it’s planned, there’s been a number of times involving unprotected sex, and sometimes that seems to be brushed off if the complainant is a male victim, but in my respectful input, it shouldn’t be .’
Ooms risked a maximum prison term of ten years.