Amardip Bhopari showered gifts on the 16-year-old boy and also plied him with drink while she groomed him. The 28 year-old Bhopari, who admitted three charges of sexual activity with a child, was also ordered to register as a sex offender for 10 years.
BIRMINGHAM – An Indo-British teacher has been jailed for two years for having sex with a pupil with learning difficulties at a Birmingham school.
Amardip Bhopari showered gifts on the 16-year-old boy and also plied him with drink while she groomed him, reported Birmingham Mail.
The 28 year-old Bhopari, who admitted three charges of sexual activity with a child, was also ordered to register as a sex offender for 10 years.
Judge James Burbidge QC said “I do not suggest you sought him out as vulnerable.
“However as a teacher you owed him a duty of care that all teachers must owe to a child.
“You had sex with him in public places, on an industrial estate and hotels and you also provided him with experiences that, as a 16-year-old, meant that he would be attached to you.”
Hugh O’Brien Quinn, prosecuting at Birmingham Crown Court, said the defendant started working at the academy school, which catered for pupils with learning difficulties or behavioural problems, in December 2012.
He said there was an occasion when the victim, who was in the teacher’s art class, wrote his phone number on the back of a piece of paper and she subsequently rang him.
O’Brien Quinn said that the conversation was “sexual” and over the next few nights there were further calls.
He said the first physical contact took place just before Valentine’s day in 2013, when Bhopari texted the boy and told him to meet her in the art room before classes began, where she performed a sexual act on him.
Further sexual activity took place at an industrial estate near the school and they went on to have sexual intercourse in the teacher’s car on a number of occasions while they also had sex at her home.
Bhopari also took the victim, who suffered from ADHD and dyslexia, to a Formula 1 hotel on his birthday where they stayed all day and where the defendant gave him vodka.
O’Brien Quinn said although the boy had indicated he was not looking for any kind of relationship Bhopari continued to contact him frequently and ask him to meet up.
He said Bhopari had also taken the teenager to Drayton Manor Park where she “paid for everything he wanted” and that she had also allowed him to drive her car even though he did not have a licence.
There came a stage when the victim began a relationship with a girl more appropriate to his age, but when he told Bhopari they should end their relationship she made it plain she wanted it to go on.
Matters came to light in December 2013 and Bhopari was arrested.
John Smitheman, defending, said Bhopari, who had left the academy as a result of the matters being discovered, was full of remorse.
She had got a job at the school without any teaching qualifications where it appeared she was a great success.
He said “She fell in love with this young man, they had a relationship. She knew that it was wrong but it happened.”
Courtesy Birmingham Mail
