Female teacher found guilty of luring young students into sex

CANBERRA - Another female teacher faces a prison sentence following the seduction of teenage schoolboys that on one occasion involved group sex with four aged 14 to 16.

Sarah Jayne Vercoe, a 25-year-old married honours graduate, will be sentenced in Tasmania's Supreme Court tomorrow on 11 charges of sexual intercourse with a person under 17 and three of indecent assault.

Vercoe admitted the offences, telling the court in a letter: "I now intend to take responsibility for my actions. I intend to learn from my mistakes, and never repeat my actions.

The Hobart Mercury said the prosecution told Hobart's Supreme Court that Vercoe had become predatory and had initiated sex, initially with a 15-year-old she had sex with at her home while her husband was away.

Further charges followed an incident in which Vercoe took four boys - two aged 16, one 15 and the other 14 - to her home after a basketball game and engaged in sex with them.

Vercoe's conviction follows the jailing in May of former Melbourne teacher Karen Louise Ellis for six months on six counts of sex with a 15-year-old student. An earlier suspended sentence was overturned on appeal.

The original sentence imposed on Ellis raised fury because of suggestions leniency had been granted because her victim was a boy.

Many critics said it was in contrast to tennis coach Gavin Maxwell Hopper's much heavier sentence of 3 1/2 years in the 1980s for sex with a 14-year-old female student.

Last week former teacher Travis Glenn Robertson, 27, was jailed for a minimum of two years for an affair with a 17-year-old student, also involving group sex with a former pupil who was a friend of the teenager.