North: Music teacher indecently assaulted boy
A former music mistress at a top private school in the North escaped jail today when she was sentenced on six charges of indecently assaulting a 15-year-old boy.
Laura Anne Brownlee, 26, was given six months’ imprisonment suspended for two years on each of the charges when she appeared at North Down Magistrates’ Court in Bangor, Co Down.
Mrs Brownlee, who pleaded guilty to the charges, was also ordered to sign the Sex Offenders Register and to remain on it for seven years.
She was sacked from Rockport prep school in Holywood, Co Down, after she pleaded guilty to the charges in September.
She had previously been suspended on full pay after being charged last year.
The offences did not involve a pupil, past or present, at the school, but the boy was a member of a church youth group of which Mrs Brownlee was the leader.
The court heard that the indecent assaults all took place in July 2004 and did not go beyond kissing and hugging.
Sentencing the blonde teacher, magistrate Mervyn Bates said: “It is unlikely you will ever be in the position to work with children again.”
He said she had been guilty of a serious breach of trust.
The boy’s parents “expected he would be in safe hands and not suffer abuse of any kind”.
Mr Bates dismissed the option of imposing fines or community services as inappropriate. He said only a custodial sentence would satisfy.
However, he said he would suspend the six-month sentence on each charge for two years.
The court heard that Brownlee, who formerly lived at Edenderry village in south Belfast, had moved away from the province to start a new life with her husband in England.
The indecent assaults started when she and her husband were staying with the teenager’s family at their holiday home.
Andrew Crawford, prosecuting, said she had texted the 15-year-old at 3am and asked him to meet her in the kitchen.
When he went downstairs to join her the kissing and hugging started.
He described it as “proper kissing”.
He said there were further liaisons in the disabled toilets at the Odyssey entertainment centre in Belfast, at a barbecue, in a forest and when she took him to the grounds of her school.
Mr Crawford said the accused had admitted the kissing and hugging, insisting: “It never developed beyond that.”
He said she gave the excuse she had suffered a mental breakdown last year and was “not responsible for her actions, not thinking straight”.
Jackie Orr QC, defending, said her client accepted she was guilty of inappropriate conduct.
“The defendant is deeply remorseful and very sorry and wants to express that to the court,” she said.
Miss Orr, appealing for leniency, told the magistrate the indecent assault had been “very much at the lower end of the scale”.
She added: “There was no question of inappropriate touching.
“There was not any grooming in this incident, nor was she stalking him in any way.”
Brownlee’s father, Alan Collins, said his daughter had only ever wanted to be involved in music and work with children.
He told the court: “That is finished. Her whole life is over.”
The teacher was suspended from Rockport on full pay when she was charged last year but dismissed at a disciplinary hearing after she pleaded guilty to the charges in September.
A spokesman for the school said she had lodged an appeal against her dismissal which was expected to be heard now the case had been concluded.
