Although a 31-year-old teacher confessed to having sex with one of her 16-year-old students in the backseat of her car, she won’t spend a night behind bars for her disgusting sex crime. The teacher, 31-year-old Monique Ooms, may have pleaded guilty to the sexual assault of a student at Victoria’s Latrobe Valley County Court, but the judge has decided not to jail Ooms for her four counts of sexual penetration of a child while the underage teen was under her supervision and care.
On Friday, Ooms heard the good news from Judge John Smallwood. Judge Smallwood decided that he would not send Ooms to jail for having sex with her underage student despite how she confessed to the crime. Nevertheless, Judge Smallwood fears that his decision could be overturned in an appeals court when the prosecution files for an appeal on the lenient decision concerning the teacher who bedded her student in the backseat of her car and in her home.
Prior to Judge Smallwood’s decision, Ooms faced as much as ten years in jail for the crime against the child.
During her time in court, the judge and jury heard how the student had snuck out of his home in the middle of the night in order to have raunchy sex with his then-school teacher, Ooms. Apparently, Ooms had chosen a victim who had gone through grief recently. The student had lost their close friend in a car crash the week before getting sexually assaulted by Ooms and was allegedly in a very “vulnerable situation emotionally.”
Although Ooms was scheduled to be sentenced for her sex crimes on Friday, Judge Smallwood (above) decided to let her go and abandoned the court date so the prosecution could look up information from the Court of Appeals to see if the court had ever dealt with a case similar to the one concerning this teacher who bedded her underage student.
Judge Smallwood did not know how to respond to the case because he claimed to have never had a case involving a teacher who had sex with a student age sixteen or older. The judge did not know whether or not Ooms’s victim had been harmed during the illicit sex episodes.
“Often in these situations, the harm is what comes from other people after it becomes public,” Judge Smallwood said. The judge felt that although Ooms’s victim was a school student, he was not very young since he was over the age of sixteen.
“There has clearly been discussion between him and her about the wrongfulness of it. He nevertheless consents and makes that very clear,” he said. “He being very close to 17 … does that go to in any way, shape or form the objective seriousness of the offending?”
Judge Smallwood decided not to jail the sex criminal because of the “sheer fragility” of her mental state.
“I don’t want there to be any accidents when it’s not necessary if you understand what I’m saying,” he said.