Greensborough teacher Kathryn Joy Woods performed sex acts on 14-year-old boy

A former Greensborough teacher came to know a 14-year-old boy and his family very well, but the relationship spiralled out of control once the boy’s parents went overseas.

Woods was a former teacher at St Mary's Primary School in Greensborough.

A former Greensborough teacher has avoided jail for a series of historical sex acts with a 14-year-old boy that were labelled a “grave breach of trust”.

Kathryn Joy Woods was sentenced in December for indecent assault and gross indecency while the victim, who cannot be named, was under her care.

She was found guilty in the County Court of masturbating with the victim in his family home, while the boy’s parents were overseas — they mutually repeated the act on another five occasions.

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Woods was 24 during the time of the offending in the early 1980s.

She was the victim’s Grade 5 teacher at St Mary’s Primary School, but visited the families of her students as part of the school’s pastoral care program.

Woods became close with the victim and his parents, attending family dinners, privately tutoring the victim and maintaining contact with him once he started secondary school.

She then took up a position as a governess on a Queensland sheep station.

The pair wrote to each other, with Woods eventually admitting in them she loved the victim and felt their relationship had grown from “mother and son” to a “boyfriend”.

The offending then occurred when Woods returned to Melbourne to “look after” the victim until his parents returned from overseas.

The victim had a breakdown when Woods later told him she was in a relationship with a man — he drank so much whiskey at a school fete he was almost taken to hospital.

The victim was then “drunk and angry about a lot of things” 29 years later when he made the first complaint to police.

Ms Woods, now 59, has not worked in education since her arrest on January 26, 2017.

Judge Douglas Trapnell took into account Woods’ “good character” prior to the offences and an “excellent employment history” which considered her as having “excellent” rehabilitation prospects.

She was convicted and sentenced to a community corrections order where she will need to perform 200 hours of unpaid work and undergo mental health assessment and treatment.

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