Teaching assistant is jailed for sex with boy, 15
A TEACHING assistant has been jailed for two years and eight months for having sex with a 15-year-old boy.
Kellie Smith “bought (her victim) sweets” before having sex with him twice in a hotel room in March last year, Warwick Crown Court heard.
The 28-year-old, who had been a teaching assistant since March 2016, had also given the boy vodka and cans of Stella Artois lager and smoked cannabis with him in her car.
Smith then took her victim to the hotel, checking in in the early hours of the morning.
The defendant did not turn up for work the following morning, having left the hotel around six hours later.
When she was arrested, Smith, of Nuneaton, tested positive for cocaine and admitted possession of the substance at an earlier court hearing.
On Tuesday, she pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual activity with a child and she went on to sob throughout the hearing – occasionally dabbing her eyes with a tissue.
Recorder Martin Butterworth told Smith the fact her victim consented “makes no difference at all”.
He said: “It is clear he caught your eye and there was grooming behaviour from you towards him.
“The fact that it is accepted by the prosecution that he consented in the sense that you were not abusing him against his will makes no difference at all.
“You were taking advantage of a vulnerable child to satisfy your own sexual needs.
“Over many hours, in fact, you groomed him with a trip in the car, you provided him with alcohol and you were treating him as if he was a potential partner.
“Whatever his attitude was towards you, it could not be trusted because he was a child.” Opening the case against Smith, prosecutor Rebecca Wade said the boy “felt happy”, was “flattered”, and was “enjoying himself ”.