A 48 year old dance teacher who sent a 13-year-old boy several sexual messages has been spared jail time.
Jennifer Hesse, shared her feelings for the boy at her private dance class in Bournemouth, Dorset, UK according to prosecutors and despite being a mother of two, she abused her position of trust and secretly sent him “intense sexual” WhatsApp messages.
Bournemouth Crown Court heard how she encouraged the minor, who cannot be named for legal reasons, to be “touchy” around her for her own sexual gratification.
And in one message she told him: “I need you to be touchy all the time.”
She then warned the boy to quickly delete the messages so that his parents wouldn’t see them.
She said she felt “an odd combination of dizziness and calm” and that she “could not breathe” when he was with her.
The exchange of messages culminated in Hesse repeatedly telling the boy she loved him, the court heard.
When the victim told Hesse that he had a girlfriend and wanted the ‘relationship’ with Hesse to stop, she became jealous and pressured him to carry it on.
The relationship ended when the boy’s mum found the messages and went to the police.
Nicola Talbot-Hadley, prosecuting, said: “The victim gave evidence in which he rejected that he had a crush on Mrs Hesse and the jury also rejected this version of events.
“The jury were given a great deal of messages between them. It was extremely intense and emotionally pressurising.
“It often took place late at night and the defendant was under the influence of alcohol some of the time.
“The messages were sexualised and there was reference to ‘touch and tease’. She repeatedly told him she loved him.”
.
After the victim told Hesse he has a girlfriend, she responded: “You are 13 and do not have the capacity for that yet. I want you to be able to love me exactly the way I need.”
The prosecutor went on: “This was an abuse of trust.
“It became his ‘new normal’ that he had to deal with such intense and pressurised messages. They left him stressed out and embarrassed.
“It is clear that he did not want to go to the dance school through fear of meeting Mrs Hesse.”
Hesse gave a letter to the judge in which she claimed she had trouble understanding boundaries.
You bombarded him with messages and would not listen when he said, ‘please stop’. He found it very difficult to deal with
Addressing her victim’s family in court, she said she had overstepped boundaries “again and again”.
She said: “This feels unforgivable and breaks my heart. I would like to step back in time and change what I have done .
“All I can do now is work on my mental health and make sure I never make the same mistake again.”
Audrey Archer, the defense lawyer, said Hesse was suffering from “unacknowledged depression and childhood trauma” and suffered from an unhappy marriage during the period of the offending.
Judge Richard Onslow blamed Hesse for treating the 13-year-old boy as a “romantic figure” who she subjected to “outpourings of love”.
“You were treating him as a romantic figure knowing all the while that he was 13.
“You bombarded him with messages and would not listen when he said, ‘please stop’. He found it very difficult to deal with.
“You put a heavy burden on him to satisfy what you perceived to be your needs. Some of these messages were for the purposes of sexual gratification.”
She was given a 12 month prison sentence suspended for 18 months.
The judge said she must also complete 100 hours of unpaid work and has been placed on the sex offenders register for 10 years.
She was also given a restraining order and a sexual harm prevention order forbidding her from contacting boys under 16 without the consent of their parents for five years.
