2 hours ago
5
A Victorian teacher allegedly molested her male student at a sleepover for his 12th birthday, a camp, and at school but wasn’t charged for years despite parents catching her in the act.
Nicole Anne Jones, 54, pleaded not guilty to 20 offences including an indecent act with a child and one count of sexual penetration of a child dating to the late 1990s at trial in the County Court of Victoria at Morwell on Tuesday.
The court was told Jones, who was 27 at the time of the offences, befriended the boy’s mother and would visit the family’s home often after she started teaching at St Mary’s primary school in Sale.
Prosecutor David O’Doherty told the jury she became a “close and trusted friend” of the boy’s mother and was trusted to spend time alone with him.
Before the alleged offending the teacher gave the boy gifts, took him to sporting matches and let him sit on her lap and touched him when they were alone at school, O’Doherty said.
The prosecutor said the first alleged offence happened during a sleepover party for the boy’s 12th birthday when she allegedly inappropriately touched him.
One of the charges relates to the boy watching an AFL match at the teacher’s house, the court was told.
During this incident Jones allegedly told the child “one day we might meet up when you finish school” to be together properly, and said if he told anyone about them “bad things will happen”. She then performed a sex act on the boy, the court was told.
During a camp at Coonawarra which the boy attended, one of the mothers noticed Jones was missing from the campfire.
O’ Doherty told the court the woman went to Jones’ cabin and flicked the light on, finding the pair in the adult woman’s bed. The woman told the boy’s father and the school’s then principal, the prosecutor said.
On another occasion, another parent saw Jones leading the child away from the school’s end-of-year barbecue and caught them “passionately kissing”, O’Doherty said.
The parent interrupted and ordered the boy to come with her, before later telling St Mary’s principal what had happened, O’Doherty told jurors.
The school principal held a meeting with Jones and warned her multiple times to end the inappropriate behaviour, he said.
According to the prosecutor, school authorities told the teacher she was not to have one-on-one time with any student, nor to close her classroom door, and later held a meeting with the boy’s mother, parish priest, the school’s principal and a Catholic Education Office worker.
The mother later confronted Jones about it, who claimed the principal was “out to get rid of her”, the court was told.
The boy did not divulge the alleged abuse until years later, and didn’t reveal the allegations to his parents until 2020, O’Doherty said.
Defence lawyer Paul Kounnas said Jones never disputed her friendship with the boy’s mother but denied the acts of inappropriate contact.
“She says clearly, without qualification … that she did not do it, that she is not guilty and the defence is that none of these allegations happened. Not a single one,” he said.
“She denies kissing, and she denies touching inappropriately, and she denies any sexual contact,” Kounnas added.
He said there was nothing sinister in the friendship between Jones and the boy’s mother, and flagged the alleged victim might have had other motivations for raising claims against his former teacher.
Kounnas urged jurors to keep an open mind in the case.
The teaching watchdog suspended Jones on an interim basis, which barred her from working at schools.
In July 2025, Jones’ application for renewal of registration was refused on the basis that she was charged with category A offences.
Until her registration was refused, she was recorded as “suspended” on the Victorian Institute of Teaching’s Register of Disciplinary Action. She had been suspended since November 2022. However, that entry was removed given the suspension was superseded by the refusal decision.
