Boy allegedly showed teacher's 'nudes' to friends and family, trial hears

CONTENT WARNING: This article refers to alleged child abuse.

A boy who allegedly had a sexual ‘relationship’ with a teacher reportedly showed explicit photos or videos of her to his girlfriend, friend and brother, a trial has heard.

The teacher, who currently legally cannot be named, is fighting allegations that she had a sexual and romantic relationship with the 15-year-old, which began after the then-24-year-old met him at his school in late 2020.

She pleaded not guilty to seven charges in an ACT Supreme Court trial that started earlier this week and claims while she did eventually send him revealing images, she thought he was 16.

The boy’s then-teenage girlfriend testified on Thursday (19 September), telling jurors she had an “on-and-off” relationship with him over 2020 and 2021.

“He said to me there was this prac teacher … that he thought was attractive,” she said.

She claimed he told her he had started talking to the teacher over social media and asked her to send him “nudes”. He then went on to show her a couple of these pictures.

For instance, the girlfriend claimed she and the boy got into an argument during a date in 2021 when “he was just like, ‘we’ll I’ll get her to send me nudes right now'”.

The girlfriend claimed the boy messaged the teacher, who sent him a picture of herself in a G-string, which he then showed to her.

She claimed the boy showed her another photo the teacher sent him, in which she was topless. She also saved a video of the boy slapping the teacher’s buttocks that he’d put on social media in June 2021.

Also, in June 2021, the girlfriend screenshotted a photo of the boy and the teacher together, which the former had posted on social media.

“I was like, ‘What is this about?'” the girlfriend said.

“He was like, ‘She takes me on dates, she spends money on me, she does this to me’, and kind of rubbed it in, I guess.”

The girlfriend alleged the boy sent her a photo in which he was wearing a Louis Vuitton belt, which he claimed the teacher had bought for him. He then allegedly told her that “she was better than me because I couldn’t buy him things”.

The boy’s friend testified next and told jurors the teacher had allegedly given the pair of them lifts in her car “wherever we needed to go”, like to another friend’s house or a shopping centre.

The friend claimed the boy had shown him a photo of him and the teacher hugging and had also shown him two or three similar videos of the teacher performing a sex act on herself.

“There were videos of her sent to him. Just inappropriate material, I guess you’d say,” the friend claimed.

Earlier, jurors heard the boy had apparently shown his brother a video of the teacher in lingerie.

“I just thought it was weird,” the brother said in 2022 when police asked him why he didn’t talk to the boy about the video at the time.

Under questioning from the teacher’s barrister, Sam Pararajasingham, the brother accepted it was possible the boy had shown him this video at the end of 2021.

In late 2020, the teacher was a prac teacher at a school in Canberra as part of her studies for her university degree when she met the boy. While he was not in her class, she met him at the school.

She left that school and started work at another, but the pair allegedly started talking on social media after the boy sent her a message.

Jurors heard the interview police made with the boy, who is now aged in his late teens, in 2022 earlier this week.

He told police he used to ask the teacher to send him “photos” and claimed, “She would, most times, say ‘yeah'”. He later agreed he’d asked her for “nudes”.

“‘Don’t show anyone’, that’s what she said,” the boy told police.

Police asked why they didn’t find any videos of her on his phone.

“I deleted them when I heard [she] got arrested. I went on my phone and deleted everything, just in case you saw anything,” the boy said.

“I was trying to help her.”

The teacher has pleaded not guilty to single counts of the persistent sexual abuse of a child, making pornographic material available to a young person and supplying cannabis to a young person, as well as two counts each of grooming and committing an act of indecency.

The trial is expected to run for two weeks before Acting Justice John Burns.

If this story has raised any concerns for you, 1800RESPECT, the national 24-hour sexual assault, family and domestic violence counselling line, can be contacted on 1800 737 732. Help and support are also available through the Canberra Rape Crisis Centre on 02 6247 2525, the Domestic Violence Crisis Service ACT 02 6280 0900, the Sexual Violence Legal Services on 6257 4377 and Lifeline on 13 11 14. In an emergency, call Triple Zero.