Teacher Monica Young jailed for sex with 14-year-old student
Sydney high school teacher Monica Young, who had sex with her 14-year-old student, has been jailed.
Police & Courts
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A Sydney high school teacher who had sex with her 14-year-old student — both on and off school grounds — has been jailed.
Monica Young dressed in a black face mask, patterned scarf and fur jumper to hear her fate in the District Court on Wednesday afternoon.
The 24-year-old was handcuffed and taken into custody after being sentenced to a four year and nine month aggregate term of imprisonment, eligible to be released on parole in October 2023.
Young backflipped and pleaded guilty last year to three counts of aggravated sexual assault after initially denying the child sex allegations.
Judge Kate Traill told the court Young “manipulated” the victim from an all boys school.
“The trust parents place in teachers was breached egregiously by the offender on numerous occasions,” Judge Traill said.
“She must have known it was criminally and morally wrong. The offender preyed on the student. She exploited his vulnerability and manipulated him. She did so in circumstances where she knew she was his teacher and recognised his sexual immaturity.”
In his emotional victim statement read to the court the boy said he saw Young as a “friend” and a “cool teacher”.
“He thought she was a real friend and she made him feel important. He thought she cared about him and would never hurt him,” Judge Traill told the court.
The court heard how he had to leave school in Year 9 after fellow students found out about the abuse.
The boy has had sleeping problems and fractured relations with his family ever since.
“He has struggled to work out what went wrong,” Judge Traill told the court.
She took into account Young’s borderline personality disorder diagnosis and a past abusive relationship.
Judge Traill told the court Young would never be employed as a teacher again but had high hopes of rehabilitation.
The Greenacre woman was 23 and soon to be married when she got her first full-time job at a Sydney school teaching teenage boys in March 2020.
Just three months after starting the role, Young began grooming the student, sharing messages and calls on social media app Snapchat before physically abusing him in a classroom in June 2020.
The abuse was exposed the following month by the boy’s suspicious aunt who followed the pair to a parking lot.
The lurid agreed facts show Young sent the boy explicit nude pictures before ordering him to “send one” of his penis, which he did.
One afternoon at school, Young told the boy to meet her in a class during lunch.
She sat beside the boy and dared him to “finger” her and told him: “You don’t have the balls”. He touched her vagina over her tights before she grabbed his hand and put two fingers inside her.
The behaviour escalated with the pair meeting multiple times in and out of school.
She told him: “It‘s dangerous if we get caught but if you do it will be worth it”.
One day, the boy skipped class to meet Young at a park. She picked him up and parked her car, before climbing over the centre console to abuse him.
On the last day of the school term, Young put on a movie for the class and sat at the back with the boy. Young touched his penis over his clothing.
She let the boy and his friend sit in her classroom later that day for another movie viewing, where he touched her vagina over her tights.
The same day at a different part of the school on a staircase, she pulled the boy’s school shorts down and sucked his penis, while using her hand.
In a Snapchat call on the first weekend of July, 2020, Young appeared to orgasm with a vibrator while the boy watched. She asked the boy to show his penis, which he did.
The beginning of the end came when the boy’s mum read his phone messages. She saw a selfie from Young from her bed, which said: “I’m waiting for you”.
He tried to cover it up, telling her she was helping him with school work but the truth eventually came out and Young was reported to the school on July 7, 2020.
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