A shamed teacher who ‘destroyed her life’ by having sex with a teenage pupil in a lay-by is now a happily married mother-of-two who has quietly rebuilt her life, can reveal.
Eppie Sprung Dawson lost her marriage and her job after she was discovered half-naked inside a car with the boy by patrolling police officers.
Her crime – for which she was spared jail but made to sign the sex offenders’ register – had largely been forgotten over the last 12 years until this Thursday when she called a radio phone-in show on prison reform.
In the awkward radio exchange, Eppie, 38, complained to the host that she is ‘stigmatised’ by her sex offence and ‘wasn’t invited to her daughter’s friends’ birthday parties’.
Following her conviction for the offence after a school Christmas party in 2012, the then 26-year-old’s life fell apart.
She was struck off the teaching register, her husband Ranald Dawson divorced her – and she was publicly shamed including by the parents of Matthew Robinson, the boy she had a relationship with.
Showing little remorse for her crime, Sprung shamelessly moved the then 18-year-old – and his X-Box – into her marital home although denied they were in a relationship.
Matthew’s furious father Jonathan said at the time: ‘She has got her hooks in him at the moment. She just can’t let go.’
Since then, Sprung, who uses her maiden name, has found love with Chris Atkinson, who runs his own building company.
The pair married at Cheylesmore Manor House in Coventry in September 2021, followed by a reception in a local cocktail bar.
In a loved-up post on Facebook, Chris spoke of feeling ‘happy and relaxed’ during the nuptials, adding ‘we had such a great time!’
Other posts on the site show them doting over a young son and daughter.
In a recent interview, she revealed when she first sought IVF to conceive her daughter five years ago, she was told her past could bar her from treatment.
She said: ‘I didn’t know at the time, but you have to answer questions about your criminal background. Normally if you conceive naturally that has no relevance yet here was a fertility clinic telling me it could deny me treatment’.
Yesterday at the couple’s three-bed semi-detached home in countryside to the east of Dumfries, Sprung declined to comment.
But a friend told : ‘Eppie was at her lowest point after her conviction. She lost her the career she loved, and her marriage collapsed. Now she is happy again and she is looking forward to the future. She has put what happened in the past.’
With her crime bringing her career as an English teacher to an abrupt end, Sprung has turned to the charity and non-profit sector in her native Dumfries, Scotland.
After jobs in the LGBT, sporting and ‘third sector’ organisations, two years ago she founded a charity to work with offenders.
On the website for Next Chapter Scotland, CEO Sprung says: ‘When my children grow up and have to deal with the inevitable consequences of my own conviction, I hope they’ll feel proud that I’m at least doing something useful with the experience.’
Earlier this year when Huw Edwards’ pleaded guilty to making indecent images of children, she was quick to liken her situation to that of the shamed BBC Newsreader, posting on X: ‘One of the unique things about a conviction for a sexual offence is the way in which society erases every good thing you’ve ever done prior to that moment. As if nothing good you’ve done in the past counts any longer. Watching it play out for Huw Edwards makes me sad.’
Sprung frequently shares posts by hard-left former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn on her social media platforms and described coverage in the Daily Record of her radio phone in as ‘gutter press’.
In the BBC Radio Scotland show, Sprung 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 be 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.
Sprung became a social pariah after police caught her and Mr Robinson half-naked in a secluded layby in December 2012 following a school Christmas dance.
Officers who had been on patrol became suspicious when they spotted condensation on the car windows and found them in the front seat.
It later emerged they had also had sex in the PE department while his unwitting mother Sheree waited at the school gates for him
Sprung 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 Sheriff 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.
Her lawyer David Finnie told the court: ‘Her life has been fairly well destroyed by this.’
Her victim Matthew is now 29 and a married father-of-two still living in Dumfries.
Speaking to after Sprung’s radio phone in, he said that they were still in contact, but not regularly.
‘I presume she is getting on with her own life, sorting things out. I didn’t know she was on the radio. She didn’t message me to say so.’
Asked if they still talk, he said: ‘On the rare occasions when she is doing, she normally tells me. But as far as I am aware she has moved on, so have I, it’s as simple as that.’