Pregnant high school teacher, Monique Ooms, was seen crying at the Court of Appeals in Melbourne, Australia, Tuesday

The Appeals Court panel upheld a ruling to only give her 300 hours of community service for sexual relationship with her teen student

Ooms, 31, walks free after admitting to having sex with 16-year-old student student

The defense claimed Ooms was suffering mental anguish due to the controversy and her fight with infertility issues, although she was obviously pregnant appearing at her sentencing in July

Public Prosecution’s Office in Victoria had appealed the original ruling in March, claiming Ooms deserved serious jail time for abusing her position as a teacher at the Sale Secondary College

Judge John Smallwood, in the original ruling found the teacher and student’s relationship “utterly inappropriate,” but failed to see Ooms’ actions as predatory

Appeals panel upheld ruling of first court, describing the judgment as a “difficult sentencing exercise”

High school teacher Monique Ooms, 31, was seen crying at the Court of Appeals in Melbourne, Australia, after a panel upheld a ruling to only give her 300 hours of community service after she pleaded guilty to four counts of sexually penetrating a minor under her care or supervision

An Australian high school teacher who confessed to having sex with a 16-year-old student walked out of court free, on Tuesday.
Monique Ooms was seen crying at the Court of Appeals in Melbourne after a panel upheld a ruling to enabled the the pregnant 31-old educator avoid jail time entirely.
She was given only 300 hours of community service after she pled guilty to four counts of sexually penetrating a minor under her care or supervision, 9 News reports.
Victoria’s Office of Public Prosecutions had appealed the original ruling in March, claiming Ooms deserved serious jail time for abusing her position as a teacher at the Sale Secondary College.
Justices Richard Niall, Maree Kennedy and Cameron Macaulay, however, rejected the appeal and said Ooms’ mental illness “would potentially render a term of imprisonment ‘catastrophic.’”

Ooms confessed to having sex with a 16-year-old student but was allowed to avoid jail time and walk free Tuesday. She met the boy when she started working at the Sale Secondary College in 2022. Prosecutors said she reached out to the student when he was troubled and began sending him pictures of her in her underwear

The defense had testified in court that Ooms was depressed about her alleged infertility when she had sex with the boy, despite showing up pregnant at her sentencing in July.
She was also said to be suffering from mental health issues following alleged harassment when her relationship with the student was revealed.
Ooms, whose employment with the high school began in 2022, began to message the 16-year-old boy after seeing that he was going through personal issues, prosecutors said.
What initially started out as exchanges of support turned to grooming, including Ooms sending pictures of herself in her underwear to the victim before the student snuck out of his home and met up with his teacher for the first time in July 2022.
The pair had sex several times over that month and into early August at her home and in her car at various locations before school officials were tipped off by an anonymous letter.

Monique Ooms defense team told the court she was depressed about her alleged infertility when she had sex with the boy, despite showing up pregnant at her sentencing in July. Still, she was spared jail time after pleading guilty to having sex with the teen

Judge John Smallwood, while making the original ruling said he found the teacher and student’s relationship “utterly inappropriate,” but failed to see Ooms’ actions as predatory.
The appeals panel ultimately agreed with Smallwood’s ruling, describing the judgment as a “difficult sentencing exercise.”
“The offending was serious and, as the judge correctly noted, ordinarily a custodial sentence of some duration would be expected in order to fulfil the sentencing purposes,” the justices wrote in their ruling.
“But the judge considered this to be a very unusual situation … It is a conspicuous example of a judge concerned to do ‘individualized justice’ and to exercise the judicial sentencing discretion to ‘do justice’ in the particular case.”
Justices Richard Niall, Maree Kennedy and Cameron Macaulay dismissed the state’s appeal, finding the sentencing judge did not make any error in handing her a community work order.