Monique Ooms Melbourne, Victoria, Australia teacher avoids jail time after an appeals court upholds a previous sentence sparing her prison on grounds of mental torture and compassionate justice. Sentencing raises question of double standards towards the sexes.
Its official gyno-centrism is the official stasis in Australia.
A Melbourne, Victoria high school teacher has avoided having to serve jail time after an appeals court decreed her ‘crime of passion’ with a 16 year old student as an instance of individualised justice.
Monique Ooms, 31, was seen crying at Melbourne’s Court of Appeals after a panel upheld a ruling to only give her 300 hours of community services after she previously pled guilty to four counts of sexually penetrating a minor under her care or supervision.
A Gippsland teacher who had a sexual relationship with a student will remain free.
Monique Ooms will continue her community corrections order, after an appeal against her sentence was thrown out. @penelopeliersch #9News pic.twitter.com/eIOx8nL8CC
— 9News Melbourne (@9NewsMelb) September 5, 2023
Mental health issues cited as ‘free pass’
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 that Oom’s mental illness ‘would potentially render a term of imprisonment ‘catastrophic.”
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.
The pregnant teacher was also said to be suffering from mental health issues following alleged harassment when her relationship with the student was revealed, 9 News reported.
The teacher in her defense had also claimed she should be spared jail because exposure of the ‘illicit trysts’ led to her losing her job and suffering ‘public shame’.
Illicit tryst not deemed predatory
Ooms, who joined the high school last year, began to message the 16-year-old boy after seeing that he was going through personal issues, following the loss of a friend from a fatal car accident, prosecutors said.
The teacher inexplicably then began sending pictures of herself in her underwear to the troubled boy before the two eventually had sex for the first time in July 2022.
The pair had sex several more times at her home and in her car before school officials were tipped off by an anonymous letter.
Judge John Smallwood, who made the original ruling, said he found the teacher and student’s relationship ‘utterly inappropriate,’ but failed to see Ooms’ actions as predatory.
Would the male victim and his family agree?
Define female toxic behavior?
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 ‘individualised justice’ and to exercise the judicial sentencing discretion to ‘do justice’ in the particular case.’
Which is to wonder would the justices have upheld the previous ruling had the genders been reversed?
Reflected one commentator on social media: ‘More double standards from the woke judicial system.’
Posted another, ‘Absolutely ridiculous she only got community service when she did it repeatedly.’
Had the former teacher been found guilty, she had faced a maximum penalty of 10 years behind bars.
The ruling comes amid new developments within the sexes down-under, after a Sydney nightclub last year announced it would remove customers caught staring at someone without that person’s consent, with such behavior deemed unwanted and predatory. The move was made in a bid to counter accusations of toxic male behaviour.
