Pregnant teacher Monique Ooms avoids jail over sex with student after DPP appeal bid fails

A pregnant Victorian teacher has again avoided jail for repeatedly having sex with her teenage student after an appeal bid over her sentence was rejected.

Victoria’s highest court has upheld the “merciful” sentence handed to teacher Monique Ooms, who shed a tear as she avoided jail after repeatedly having sex with her teenage student.

The former Sale Secondary teacher will not be sent behind bars after an appeal bid by Director of Public Prosecutions Kerri Judd was rejected by the Court of Appeal on Tuesday.

Ooms, who is 23 weeks pregnant, has avoided the prospect of caring for her first-born from the confines of a jail cell after a full panel of appeal justices was “not persuaded” that the sentencing judge got it wrong.

The 31-year-old, supported in court by a woman, shed a tear as the three judges announced their ruling, which meant she would not be led into custody.

Minutes earlier, she had hugged the woman outside court before taking her seat, where her companion, sitting behind her, leaned over and rubbed her arm as they waited to learn her fate.

Ooms made no comment as she walked free from court.

Monique Ooms leaves the Court of Appeals. Picture: Luis Enrique Ascui

She was sentenced to a four-year community corrections order with 300 hours community work after pleading guilty to four charges of sexual penetration with her student — offences which carry a maximum 10 years’ jail.

The boy was aged 16 and 17 when she had sex with him in her car at a pine forest and at her home, in mid-2022.

The outdoor education teacher, who had moved to Gippsland just months earlier for the teaching gig, had approached the boy at school to check in on him after his friend had died.

The pair traded phone details, and what started as supportive texts became “increasingly affectionate and personal” as she sent him photos in her underwear.

Although the boy was over the age of consent, their month-long tryst was illegal as he was under her care, supervision and authority as a teacher.

She was reported to police and suspended from her job after two anonymous letters to the school exposed their criminal relationship.

Ooms pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a four-year community corrections order with 300 hours community work. Picture: David Crosling

The DPP argued that Ooms’ punishment was “manifestly inadequate”, and that the sentencing judge erred in taking Ooms’ previous good character into account.

But the Court of Appeal found there was no error by the trial judge, whose sentence was “wholly within range”.

Justice Richard Niall, Justice Maree Kennedy and Justice Cameron Macaulay found that “the sentence imposed by the judge, whilst lenient and perhaps merciful, was not wholly outside of the range of dispositions reasonably open to him”.

The judges noted that Ooms was not a predator, finding it “relevant” that the student had “exercised a degree of agency in the progress of the relationship”, with him being the one to first suggest they meet up.

And while the DPP argued her position as a teacher was of “assistance” to Ooms in commencing the sexual relationship, the trio of judges found that their teacher-student connection actually “loomed as an impediment” to the pair, who twice discussed the appropriateness of them having sex.

The DPPs appeal was dismissed.