The identity of a former trainee teacher who groomed and sexually assaulted a 15-year-old student may be revealed after courts overturned a gag order restricting publication of her name and the school involved.
Petra Shasha, 28, was found guilty of sexually abusing, grooming and indecently assaulting a schoolboy in the ACT Supreme Court last week.
His name had already been communicated at the time of his arrest in February 2022, which marked the end of the “relationship” he had cultivated with the 15-year-old girl.
The court heard Shasha first formed a bond with the St Edmunds College student while working as a trainee teacher for three weeks at the school in late 2020.
Despite being 24 years old at the time, Shasha and the boy became so close that the teenager believed they were a couple.
Prosecutors told the court she methodically groomed the young man by giving him lifts, designer clothes and other gifts and transferring money to him to engage in a sexual act.
After a day of deliberation, the jury found Shasha guilty of persistent sexual abuse of a child, providing pornographic material to a young person, grooming and committing an indecent act with a child.
However, Shasha was found not guilty of charges of separate grooming and committing an indecent act against a child.
Former teacher Petra Shasha (pictured) has been found guilty of having a sexual and romantic relationship with a 15-year-old schoolboy from late 2020 to February 2022.
His victim told police that Shasha brazenly spent time with him in public and had made plans about what to do if they saw someone they knew.
“We always said, if we see someone we know, let’s keep walking,” he said, according to Canberra Times.
“We didn’t want anyone to see it.”
The court heard Shasha never taught the schoolboy directly, but was with his group of friends during lunch.
He then approached her on social media after she finished her term at the school, where they communicated regularly while she worked at nearby Canberra Girls Grammar School.
She denied indecently assaulting the boy on two occasions, once in a David Jones changing room and once in a car, but was found guilty of the first.
However, Shasha admitted to sending him numerous explicit videos and photographs of herself, but only after he turned 16, the age of consent.
An ACT Supreme Court jury found the then 24-year-old (pictured) groomed him by buying him designer clothes and transferring money to him before indecently assaulting him in a car.
However, he was sent some “revealing… cleavage” images of her when she was just 15, but she claimed to have a “reasonable belief” that he was a year older.
The student admitted to lying to Shasha about his age and grade in school, which his attorney said “provides him with a defense” at the start of the trial.
The court heard that Shasha had approached the victim after discovering police were investigating their relationship to tell her she is “not a bloody victim”.
A separate recording captured her saying, “baby, please don’t fuck with me, my ears are burning.”
Shasha remains free on bail while awaiting sentencing in February.
