Creative writing teacher, 24, sent ‘highly sexual’ messages to pupil, 17, after they read Fifty Shades

A teacher has admitted sexting a 17-year-old student as they studied erotic best-seller Fifty Shades of Grey.

Thomas Stirling, 24, was caught sending “sexually explicit” messages to one of his teenage students via Instagram when his girlfriend logged onto his account.

The messages included references to her virginity and sexual acts with an “element of fantasy” to them, and were sent while he had been teaching at Franklin College, Grimsby.

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Prosecutor Jeremy Evans said the relationship between Stirling and his ex-girlfriend ended after she logged on to his Instagram account and it was discovered that “intimate” and “sexually explicit” messages had been “pinging between” Stirling and the teenage girl.

Staff at the Sheffield college contacted a welfare officer at the Grimsby college and the defendant was later suspended and his employment was terminated. He later took a job as a receptionist at a local hotel.

Stirling had also set his students the task of studying E. L. James’s raunchy novel and comparing its “grammar and content” to Macbeth.

Patricia Doherty, mitigating, told the court, “They [the class] were looking at the grammar and content of that sort of book – which was the opposite of something like Macbeth.”

Mrs Doherty added: “He realises he can never be a teacher and knows what he did was incredibly foolish.”

Stirling admitted causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity while he was in a position of authority between September 1 and November 17, 2015. There was no physical sexual contact between the two and Stirling has moved away from the area and cut off all contact with the girl.

Recorder Eric Elliott, QC, told Stirling: “You knew full well, bearing in mind you were a teacher in a position of trust, that you ought not to go down that road.

“It’s a significant breach of trust.”

Stirling was given 15 days’ rehabilitation and must do a sex offenders’ treatment programme. He was also ordered to register as a sex offender for five years.