A shamed teacher who was found half-naked with her teenage pupil yesterday complained she has been left ‘stigmatised’ by her sex offence.
Eppie Sprung Dawson was convicted of having sex with a 17-year-old pupil after being found inside a car with her victim by patrolling police officers.
The 38-year-old was placed on the sex offenders’ register for six months and given a half-year-long community payback order after she admitted sexual activity with a person under 18 while she was his teacher and in a position of trust.
She was spared jail, but yesterday went on a radio phone-in show to complain about the stigma and press attention her conviction brought.
In the BBC Radio Scotland show, Sprung Dawson said: ‘‘I have a conviction for a sexual offence.
‘I was a teacher and I had an affair with a 17-year-old pupil, so I do have experience of, kind of, living with the challenges that a person can face as a result of having a criminal record.
‘I never experienced a custodial sentence, but I certainly did experience stigma.
‘I mean, I had an exceptionally large amount of press coverage, media coverage, for many, many years following my conviction.
‘And I think I would say that was the most difficult thing I experienced.
‘But I mean, of course, as with people with a conviction for a sexual offence particularly, face the highest degree of stigma.
‘And so things like employment, even things like not being invited to my daughter’s friends’ birthday parties.’
The phone in feature on Mornings with Stephen Jardine was discussing the early release of prisoners
Almost 500 inmates have been let out before they were due to in Scotland as part of the emergency early release scheme.
It was introduced amid serious overcrowding in Scotland’s prisons, with inmates serving short sentences of under four years who had 180 days or less left to serve considered for release.
Those serving life sentences, or those in jail for sexual, domestic abuse or terror-based offences, were automatically excluded from the scheme.
Sprung Dawson lost her marriage and job after she drove to a secluded layby with the teenage boy in December 2012 following a school Christmas dance and had sex with him.
The pair were discovered by patrolling police officers who became suspicious when they spotted condensation on the car windows and found them in the front seat.
Sprung Dawson, then aged 26, taught English at St Joseph’s College in Dumfries, and had agreed to give the dyslexic teenager extra lessons.
When she was sentenced in June the following year at Dumfries Sheriff Court, judge Sherriff George Jamieson told her: ‘You were there simply to teach but you have been called into temptation and you have committed adultery – your marriage is gone and your career as a teacher is gone.
‘What you have been charged with is a breach of trust, and I cannot see that there is anything to be gained by a custodial sentence.
‘Had it not been for the fact that you were this young man’s teacher, there would have been no criminality.’
It later emerged that she ended up living with the boy in her marital home less than two months after being put on the register.
At the time he said they were not in a relationship, and he later moved out.
Sprung Dawson was struck off the teaching register in December 2013.
She has since set up a charity called Next Chapter Scotland, which works to ‘help anyone who has been involved with the criminal justice system to navigate the stigma and discrimination that they can face throughout their lives’.
It said its ‘vision’ was of a society which ‘no longer judges people based on their worst choices but, instead, sees them as they are today’.
Next Chapter Scotland has won money from the National Lottery Community fund, as well as other organisations.