Oz female teacher ordered to pay student 120k dlrs for ’sexual abuse’

SYDNEY - A teacher in Bathurst has been asked by a District Court judge to pay a former student of hers 120,293 dollars over a liaison he said amounted to sexual abuse.

Anna Blackburn and David Withyman, a teenaged student at a special needs school, spent months in a sexual relationship, which later came to light when the latter sued the former for damages.

Withyman, who was transferred to Carenne Public School in Bathurst because of his disturbed personality, claimed that the end of the relationship, in October 2003, triggered his spiral into crime leading to him being jailed for firearms offences and hospitalised for psychiatric treatment.

Evidence from a former confidante, Diana Minato, satisfied the judge that teacher and student had had a sexual relationship for about five months.

Minato recalled Blackburn saying in 2003 that she had sex with a student at her school and “there was something that attracted her to him … an element of excitement about him being younger”.

“Ms Blackburn took advantage, albeit with the plaintiff’s enthusiastic, but markedly immature, consent to embark on a sexual escapade that, from her point of view, could never have been a long-term commitment,” the Sydney Morning Herald quoted the judge as saying.

“An end disastrous to the plaintiff was inevitable,” he stated. (ANI)