MOONEE PONDS (AUSTRALIA)
Daily Mail Australia [Sydney NSW, Australia]
July 2, 2024
By Padraig Collins for Daily Mail Australia
A Catholic school teacher who abused a student ate dinner at her victim’s home to gain the trust of the teenager’s family.
Victorian woman Michelle Grant, 62, was sentenced to six months in prison for the shocking abuse of the St Columba’s College Essendon pupil in the early 1990s.
On one occasion, during a ‘sleep over’, Grant and the student watched what the County Court heard was a ‘lesbian movie’ and kissed on the couch.
The art and textiles teacher then copied the scenes of the film and sexually abused the teenager, the Herald Sun reported.
Grant taught at the school from the 1980s until she was fired in 2022, groomed the girl from the age of 14 and wrote letters telling her she loved her.
As their ‘intimacy grew’, the teacher, who was married at the time, drew the victim who was nude and told a ‘web of lies to keep the relationship alive’.
She got into a ‘position of trust’ with the girl, having dinner with the victim’s family and arranging with her mother to spend time with her.
The teacher also took the pupil to the theatre and trips to the country with her husband and family and friends of the girl.
Grant would ‘slip away’ to be ‘physical’ with the victim on these country trips, the court heard.
The girl was tricked into sleeping over at the teacher’s Moonee Ponds house by being told that others would be there too.
But there were no others there and Grant stuck her tongue in the child’s mouth, saying afterward that ‘You can’t tell anyone … I could go to jail for this.’
The mother-of-two then left her husband and moved to Essendon where she continued her offences against the victim.
When the teenager finished high school, she tried to distance herself from Grant.
But she used ’emotional blackmail’ to try to keep the ‘sexual relationship’ ongoing and slapped the victim in the face when she child finally ended things.
Grant paid for the victim to see a therapist over the trauma years after the abuse ended.
The police told the education department of the charges against Grant in 2022.
She was deregistered and banned from teaching after she pleaded guilty to what Judge Gregory Lyon said were ‘repugnant’ and ‘utterly unconscionable’ acts.
The abuse by a ‘trusted teacher’ left the victim suffering ‘real, deep and lifelong harm’, resulting in feelings of ‘shame, grief and guilt’, the judge said.
Grant was given an 18-month jail sentence for her ‘appalling transgression’, but 12 months of it was suspended.