A former teacher has pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a teenage girl, who was her student at the time of the offence, in a shed during school holidays.
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Lee Brown, 60, has previously been jailed in NSW for sexual offences committed against the same victim in that state.
She appeared in the ACT Supreme Court on Monday and pleaded guilty to a charge of sexual intercourse without consent, stemming from a 2007 incident in Canberra's north.
The court heard Brown, who lived in the ACT but taught at Yass High School when the incident occurred, admitted performing oral sex on the victim and kissing her. But there was a dispute about claims that she digitally penetrated the teenage girl on two occasions during the same incident.
The victim told the court that on the day in question, she had travelled to Canberra to visit a friend during school holidays.
She had been in text and email contact with Brown beforehand, and they arranged to meet at a shopping mall.
The victim and her friend later went to the Higgins home that Brown lived in, then to a shed in the backyard where the girls would sleep for the night.
The victim said once her friend had fallen asleep, Brown started to kiss her and touched her genitals as they sat on a lounge in the shed.
She said she told Brown to stop the touching, only for Brown to get "really pissed off". The victim claimed Brown asked her: "What did you expect? You sat yourself astride me. You obviously wanted it to happen."
The victim said she had not sat on top of Brown of her own volition and that she had been guided into that position.
She said she felt manipulated and apologised to Brown, feeling that she had to let Brown do what she wanted.
The victim said Brown then went on to perform oral sex on her and digitally penetrate her.
Asked about the alleged digital penetration, she said it had felt "very uncomfortable".
She said Brown eventually left the shed after the teacher's then-partner repeatedly came outside to ask Brown to come into the house.
Brown's barrister, Christopher Watson, suggested to the victim that there was no digital penetration during the incident in the shed.
Mr Watson said it was "a physical impossibility" for it to have taken place in the manner the victim described.
But the victim denied this and insisted it did occur.
The court was shown videos of police in NSW and the ACT interviewing Brown about her relationship with the victim.
In the NSW interview, Brown said she was ashamed after the ACT incident and felt "like the worst person" for having engaged in sexual behaviour with a student.
In a subsequent interview with ACT police, she discussed the incident again and told officers the victim was "an active participant in the relationship and gave consent".
But Brown also admitted she should have kept the victim "at arm's length" because the teacher-student dynamic meant the victim could not legally consent to sexual contact with her.
When Brown took the witness stand on Monday, she told the court she had "felt stuck" in a relationship with the victim despite knowing it was wrong.
"I guess I was obsessed with [the victim] and I just wanted to see her all the time," Brown said.
She rejected Crown prosecutor Sofia Janackovic's suggestion that she was only denying that there had been digital penetration in the shed because she knew admitting to it would result in a more severe sentence.
"I'm not pleading to things that I didn't do," Brown said.
Ms Janackovic urged Justice John Burns to find that the digital penetration did occur, saying the victim had been a credible witness and that Brown was "not reliable".
Justice Burns said the victim's version of events was convincing, and the digital penetration probably did occur as alleged.
But the judge said he could not be satisfied of that beyond reasonable doubt, meaning he must sentence Brown as if the sexual assault did not involve penetration.
Brown, who now lives in Gundaroo, is set to be sentenced on August 24.
