Sarah Kopp calls for change after Hervey Bay teacher jailed for grooming
A teacher who was groomed herself at 15 says training to combat predatory behaviour ‘barely scratches the surface’, leaving a gap which allows offenders to continue, despite assurances that enough is being done.
A Queensland teacher who was groomed herself at 15 says training to combat predatory behaviour ‘barely scratches the surface’, leaving a gap which allows offenders to continue, despite assurances that enough is being done.
As a talented 15-year-old with eyes on a future school captaincy, Sarah Kopp had the world at her feet in the year 2000.
But instead of Year 10 being her year, it was the year her dreams were shattered; when she fell victim to a teacher a court later found “inveigled” his way into her life and groomed her.
What started as teacher’s pet behaviour for the athletic and vulnerable teen eventually left her “isolated” from her friends and peers, deprived of the normal teenage experiences and caught in a cycle that resulted in her marrying him and having his children, before finally leaving him and reporting him to police.
Now Sarah is calling for change to help stop the same thing from happening to anyone else.
A teacher herself, Sarah wants the Queensland government to introduce new mandatory in-depth training for both teachers and students that will help identify grooming behaviours and red flags early and hopes other states will follow.
She said early intervention training like that could have changed her own life.
She was a student at Urangan State High School on the Fraser Coast when she was groomed by the school’s new 31-year-old physical education teacher, Paul Edward Grealy, a man she would eventually marry and have children with before going to the police in 2018.
“It started off with a lot of compliments about my skill and my ability (in dance and athletics),” Sarah said.
The compliments then started to become about “my actual physique and my body”.
Grealy then started brushing his hand against her in ways meant to appear accidental but which were not.
“Nothing untowards, a hand on the leg, an arm on the shoulder, normal little things that lower your defences, and you start to think this is normal,” she said.
She was also showered in gifts, received “special treatment” at school, like being allowed to skip lessons to help with things like setting up for carnivals.
“You’re always feeling a little bit special, a bit chosen,” Sarah said.
“They were the very first early signs.”
He then became “invested” in her personal life, developing a relationship with her socially withdrawn mother Debra who started inviting Grealy over for dinner.
His offending escalated when Sarah texted him while home sick from school one day in August 2000.
Grealy called to say he was coming over and, after arriving with chicken noodle soup and the film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, made his first sexual advance on her.
Sarah said it was the first time they were in “complete isolation”, with no chance for anyone to interrupt.
It also drove a wedge in her life.
“I stopped hanging out with my friends so much. I stopped going to the parties, stopped hanging out at the beach because I didn’t want to accidentally say my secret or have them pressure me to the point where I wouldn’t be able to cover it up,” she said.
It began a “vicious cycle” in which she “became so emotionally withdrawn from everyone in my network that (Grealy) became my sole source of support”.
Despite the attempt at secrecy, rumours started spreading across the school.
Teachers and staff members started asking questions of Sarah and her friends, and a school investigation was launched.
Grealy left Hervey Bay for Brisbane in mid-2001, with Sarah following him soon after.
She lived with an aunt and went to school at Coorparoo, with her mother eventually moving down to join her.
Their relationship continued past her Year 12 graduation before cooling down and becoming more secretive after she turned 18.
It then became on-and-off-again, but he eventually made his way back into her life when she was 20 and she soon fell pregnant.
She said getting back together was driven by what had been done to her.
“I was already in that cycle of being so dependent on him and having absolutely no life experience or relationship experience,” Sarah said.
“It really was the cycle of being trapped.”
Sarah finally ended the relationship for good in 2014, and reported Grealy to police four years later.
“As I got older and had more maturity … the relationship became more and more toxic,” she said.
“I started having a bit more understanding about what healthy relationships should look like.
“I made a lot more friends who were married with children … I could see those other people with their husbands and go ‘this is not what my life is like at all’.”
In May 2024, Grealy was found guilty by a jury of five counts of indecent treatment of a child, and one count of maintaining a relationship with a child.
At the sentencing the judge said Grealy, now 55, “took advantage … of (Sarah’s) vulnerability” and committed a “gross breach of trust”.
The judge said Grealy’s behaviour “has had a corrupting influence” on Sarah and she “suffered emotionally, psychologically, sexually, educationally, physically, socially and has damaged feelings of self-worth as a result”.
Grealy was jailed for two-and-a-half years, with his sentence suspended after serving 15 months.
He was released in August.
No appeal has been lodged, but he has applied for an extension of time to do so.
Sarah, who founded the not-for-profit Step In For Kids to protect children in April 2025, said there had been changes in the 25 years since she became a victim but more needed to be done.
“It’s still happening now,” she said.
“I feel like every time I open my phone there’s another story about a teacher grooming a student.”
She is calling for mandatory in-depth training to be introduced for educators, saying the state’s existing policies were “reactive” and “cover broad child protection, reporting of suspected abuse, and training in student protection”.
There was no requirement “specifically about grooming behaviours, the manipulative, relational, gradual pattern, at scale”, she said.
A Queensland Education spokesman defended the protocols already in place to train teachers on the issue.
Qld Ed’s procedure “provides clear guidance to staff on appropriately reporting any suspicions of harm to students,” he said.
“This is supported by the department’s mandatory student protection training materials that guide staff in identifying and responding to harm or suspected harm to students.”
The spokesman said this included a “dedicated section on grooming, which covers information such as the definition of grooming, examples of grooming behaviour, and possible indicators of grooming to look out for in students and adults”.
“Specialist student protection advisors in each region support Queensland state schools with advice, support and training, and timely and appropriate responses to student protection concerns.”
But Sarah says there remains a huge gap in the system in need of an urgent fix.
She said the current training given to Queensland teachers was “inadequate”, focused on what to do after the harm rather than how to prevent it, and did not help identify grooming and its early indicators in the real world.
“What’s currently offered barely scratches the surface,” she said.
“It defines grooming but doesn’t teach teachers how to recognise it or what to do when it’s happening right in front of them
“It needs to be intensive, and it needs to be in person.
“There’s no discussion of how grooming unfolds gradually, what patterns to watch for in adult behaviour, or what subtle changes to look for in a child.
“It tells teachers that grooming is an ‘indicator of likely sexual abuse’, but doesn’t guide them on what to do if they see those indicators, who to talk to, how to document concerns, or how to approach a child safely.
“That gap leaves teachers uncertain and hesitant, which is exactly how grooming continues undetected.“
She said she had spoken with numerous teachers who shared her concerns.
“They don’t understand what it looks like,” she said.
Sarah’s call has been backed by leading Australian child sexual abuse researchers:
Queensland University of Technology’s Dr Jodi Death said “people that are in charge of curriculum delivery on sex and relationships are having minimal training”, while University of New South Wales Sydney’s Professore Michael Salter backed Sarah’s call “100 per cent”.
“It’s a massive gap,” Professor Salter said of training programs not only in Queensland, but across the nation.
Sarah said giving teachers the skills to intervene early was crucial.
“It just takes one person to step in at any point to stop that, but to do that people need tools and knowledge to name the behaviour, to see the behaviour, and know what to do with it,” she said.
“At the moment nobody has that.”
