A Victorian mother who gave birth to a child fathered by the 12-year-old boy she had been sexually abusing has been jailed.
A judge sentenced the woman, who cannot be named to protect her victim, to six years in prison yesterday, declaring she had “used” the vulnerable boy to fulfil her own “emotional and physical needs”.
The baby in question, who was born in May 2014, is living with its now 14-year-old father and his mother, but the Department of Human Services will take it visit the woman in prison once a week.
The woman was a married mother-of-three living in suburban Melbourne when she met the victim, then 11, who had recently become friends with her daughter, also 11.
When the woman began having marital problems, she became obsessed with the victim and began looking after him before and after school.
She started having unprotected sex with him when he was 12 and she was 36. It was the boy’s first sexual encounter and they had unprotected sex more than 20 times over the next two years.
She pleaded guilty to persistent sexual abuse of a child but claimed she did not know he was old enough to father a child.
A psychiatric evaluation found the woman was attracted to the boy because he was physically maturing, and not because she is attracted to children, apparently making her unlikely to reoffend.
