The teacher, Monique Ooms, who had secret sex with a student will not be jailed

A teacher who admitted to having sex with her 16-year-old student in the backseat of her car will not spend a night behind bars for her shocking crime.

Monique Ooms, 31, of Maffra, pleaded guilty this week in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley County Court to four counts of sexual penetration of a child under her supervision and care.

On Friday, Judge John Smallwood told Ooms he would not send her to jail despite fears the decision could be overturned on appeal.

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

The court heard that the young victim of Ooms had snuck out in the dead of night to have sex with her then school teacher.

The 16-year-old had been grieving the loss of a close friend who was killed in a fatal car accident the week before and was in an “emotionally vulnerable situation”.

Ooms was scheduled to be sentenced on Friday, but Judge Smallwood dropped it to allow prosecutors to check whether the Court of Appeals had ever heard a case similar to hers.

Judge Smallwood said he had never heard a case involving a teacher where the child was not under 16 years of age.

The seasoned judge said he was concerned about whether or not the Ooms victim had been harmed by his illicit relationships.

“Often in these situations, the harm comes from other people after it becomes public,” he said.

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

“Clearly there has been a discussion between him and her about the wrongfulness of this. However, he acquiesces and makes it very clear,” she said.

‘He’s very close to 17… does that in any way, shape, or form go into the objective gravity of the offence?’

Judge Smallwood stated that a previous case in which a 17-year-old girl had sexual relations with her 40-year-old teacher was “not this situation” and wished to avoid an appeal against her sentence.

“I don’t want those points to be resolved elsewhere,” he said. “In terms of comparable cases, I can’t find any… I don’t want to turn her into a guinea pig,” she said.

I don’t want you to go through the ordeal of an appellate court for issues that I haven’t adequately addressed.

Judge Smallwood said he would not jail Ooms due to the “sheer fragility” of his mental state.

“I don’t want there to be any accidents when they don’t have to if you understand what I’m saying,” he said.

Judge Smallwood said that the crime Ooms committed was not the act of having sex with the boy, but the fact that she was his teacher.

Crown prosecutor Andrew Moore told the court that the teenager had refused to discuss the crime with counselors and was determined to move on with his life.

“There is no definitive evidence of harm, but of course it is a notorious fact that in these types of cases, sexual offenses against minors, the harm does not arise sometimes until a little later, and sometimes decades later,” he said.

Judge Smallwood said that Ooms’ crime was a breach of trust created by law.

You use the minor word. Is he? I mean I don’t know. These are the issues that concern me,’ he said.

The court heard that Ooms had taken advantage of his student in the weeks after his friend was killed in a car accident.

While the couple initially chatted on social media and by phone, before long Ooms was texting her students photos of herself in her underwear.

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

The next time they saw each other, the pair had sex in the back of Ooms’ car while it was parked in a forest at night.

The court heard that Ooms had sex with his student at least four times over the next several weeks in the backseat of his car before arranging the connections at his home.

Ooms’ dirty relationship was exposed when someone wrote two letters to the school principal, who immediately alerted the police.

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

The court listened when asked: ‘You really did it, didn’t you?’ she replied ‘Yes’.

On Wednesday, Ooms’ lawyer, Katherine Rolfe, argued that her client should avoid jail time because he suffered “public embarrassment” and lost his job.

The 31-year-old appears to have embraced her life as a tradie and has posted photos wearing an Akubra and posing in front of a 4×4 on her social media pages.

Ooms formally taught a variety of subjects to high school students and had only been at the school for a year before the inappropriate relationship began.

The messages revealed that the couple repeatedly said they ‘missed’ and ‘loved’ each other, with Ooms claiming that she fell in love with the student.

When the 16-year-old was questioned, he told police they were “just friends” and called Ooms to advise him to delete his correspondence.

The student refused to participate in the court proceedings, however his mother read an emotional impact statement in court.

He said he was worried about his son’s future and how his family would overcome the inappropriate student-teacher relationship.

She said the former teacher had been involuntarily admitted to a psychiatric ward in recent months due to suicidal attempts and ideation.

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