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Ex-UK teacher, 23, in prison for 'full-blown sexual relationship' with 15-year-old student
A former British teacher was sentenced Friday to 16 months in jail after admitting to having a “full-blown sexual relationship” with one of her former students, a 15-year-old boy.
Alice McBrearty, 23, said she and the teenager had a four-month fling together that began when she sent the boy a friend request on Facebook, Sky News reported.
McBrearty pleaded guilty to “seven counts of sexual activity with a child while in a position of trust,” the BBC reported.
According to prosecutors, the teacher kissed the student in a classroom of the east London school she taught at and had sex with the pupil at her parents’ residence in Wanstead Park. She also had sex with the student in a hotel room in Ibis.
Prosecutor Lisa Matthews said the student, who was not named, “felt special and appeared to be besotted” with the teacher. McBrearty would take the teen out to eat and to parks.
The student and teacher engaged in seven sexual encounters between Feb. 11 and May 5, 2017 but ended when the teen’s father alerted police. McBrearty was arrested on May 8, Metropolitan Police said.
Judge Sheelagh Canavan called the teacher “bright, intelligent and gifted” and “knew right from wrong,” but that “she had committed the grossest breach of trust.”
“You engaged in a full-blown sexual relationship with a 15-year-old child. I accept he was consenting – what 15 year-old schoolboy would turn down such an attractive offer?” the judge said.
"I accept you truly believed this was a great romance, you were in love with him and vice versa, and that age didn't matter. But it did. You were supposed to keep him safe, to help him make the right decisions,” the judge said.
"Instead, you helped him make all the wrong ones," she concluded.
The young woman cried and put held her head during her sentencing.
Emma Shafton, who defended McBrearty, said she has had “a spectacular fall from grace.”
"This is a young lady who has had a spectacular fall from grace - university educated, comes from a respectable family - she has been utterly disgraced by this,” Shafton said.
Shafton argued the woman “was not sexually attracted to children.”
“She will, of course, be branded a pedophile for the rest of her life. She is a sex offender,” Shafton said.
Shafton added McBrearty was delivering packages to Amazon since she was unable to receive a “decent job.”
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