Australia- A FEMALE schoolteacher who had an affair with a teenage student has been jailed for four months.

Natalina D’Addario, of Kensington in Melbourne, was a substitute teacher in Melbourne’s north, when she began a sexual relationship with the 15-year-old male student.

The 37-year-old teacher today pleaded guilty in the Victorian County Court to three counts of sexual penetration of a child in her care.

Chief Crown prosecutor, Jeremy Rapke, QC, told the court that on three occasions D’Addario performed oral sex on the student in her car, last year.

Judge Roland Williams sentenced her to 18 months’ jail, with 14 months suspended, for two years.

Judge Williams described D’Addario as the initiator of the affair and the student as a willing participant.

He said D’Addario knew what she was doing was wrong, yet she planned it and pursued the teenager with text messages, phone calls and gave him presents.

He said he accepted that she displayed genuine remorse and her behaviour was out of character.

Earlier, Chief Crown prosecutor Jeremy Rapke QC told the court D’Addario performed oral sex on the student in her car on three occasions between May and July last year.

The liaisons started after D’Addario told him off for calling her sexy in front of other students.

She told him to “reserve it for one-on-one occasions” and when asked by the student, she agreed she also found him sexy, Mr Rapke said.

She then started sending him romantic and sexual text messages, he said.

One day after school, D’Addario picked the student up in her car and they drove to a spot where she performed oral sex on him.

During a police interview, D’Addario said she felt coerced into giving the student oral sex and did not want to.

Her barrister Robert Richter QC told the court his client was a lonely, loving, vulnerable, depressed person at the time of the offences.

He said she felt shame and remorse, and pleaded guilty at the earliest stage.