Sex charge teacher walks free from court (From The Oxford Times)

Sex charge teacher walks free from court

6:34pm Friday 27th February 2009 in

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Controversial judge Julian Hall today let a teacher who had sex with a 15-year-old boy walk free after saying he wasn’t sure she harmed him.

Catherine Armstrong, 33, had promised the boy a “birthday bonk” for his 16th and had sex with him several times while he was still 15.

She initially denied the charges but then admitted two counts of sexual activity with a child and one of touching him while in a position of trust.

The teenager — who cannot be identified but has learning difficulties — asked Judge Hall at the trial to be “nice to her” when he sentenced her.

He said it took him “a stupidly long time to realise that what we were doing was wrong”.

Mother-of-two Armstrong, of Hunt Road, Thame, wrote emails to her young lover after the relationship broke down, in which she declared her love.

Yesterday Judge Hall — criticised in the past for his sentencings of paedophiles — gave Armstrong a 12-month prison sentence but suspended it for two years after calling the case unique. He said: “I find it impossible to decide if he has been harmed by what you did but you shouldn’t have done it.”

She will sign the Sex Offenders’ Register for five years.

Comments(5)

DanOxford says...
9:50pm Fri 27 Feb 09

Just imagine if it was a 33 year old MALE teacher and a 15 year old FEMALE student.

Surely the issue is that a 15 year old cannot give their consent to sexual intercourse, thus a crime of statutory rape has been committed, not that a judge has to dither over whether the 'victim' was harmed by the experience?

If a child 'quite enjoyed' sexual activity with an adult, does this make it acceptable? Surely the only people who justify illegal sex with a minor on the grounds that they might 'enjoy' it or at least would not be harmed by it are paedophiles?

Other considerations aside, this woman was in a position of trust with the boy and abused that trust.

Judges like Judge Hall are clearly out of touch and should be removed from public office for sending out the wrong message to people who abuse children.