I left my 21-year-old husband for a school boy

Mum-of-three Jay Davenport married her second husband when he was 18. Her new fiance is even younger.

A big smile lights up Jay Davenport’s face as she recalls her Boxing Day engagement. Recounting every precious moment, she is giddy with excitement. There’s no doubt the 37-year-old mum-of-three from Mt Tamborine, Qld, is in love. But the shocking fact is her fiance, Jushon, was a 16-year-old high-school student at the time of the proposal – and Jay was still married to a 21-year-old!

“I do love him,” says Jay, shyly. “I just wish people would leave us alone. I haven’t broken any laws, we’re not hurting anyone, and we are really happy.” Jay first met Jushon when he was 15. A friend of her eldest daughter Skye, now 18, Jushon would park his bike in her backyard and was often in and out with Skye’s crowd. But falling on hard times, and with nowhere else to go, he ended up moving in.

“He’d been sleeping in the skate park for nine days,” Jay recalls. “And everyone knows my door is always open to people who are having a hard time.” The unlikely couple soon became friends, supporting each other through personal problems.

Jushon was trying to cope with a volatile relationship with his now-estranged mum, Jay with the breakdown of her second marriage just two years after saying “I do” to then-18-year-old Drew Lawson. “I just felt I could open up to her,” explains the shy teenager, who’s now 17. “I never open up to anyone, and it felt good.”