Teacher who had sex with boy while mum waited at school gates living new married life

Eppie Sprung Dawson lost her job as a teacher and split from her husband after being found having sex with a pupil in a layby following a school dance, but is now remarried with children

A teacher who was caught having sex with a pupil in a layby after a school dance is now “happy” after remarrying and raising a family.

Eppie Sprung Dawson, an English teacher, had offered the 17-year-old pupil help with his lessons at St Joseph’s College in Dumfries but following a school dance in 2012 she was found half-naked with the teenager by police. It later emerged they had also had sex in the PE department while the boy's mum was waiting at the school gates.

She lost her job and her two-year marriage ended. Sprung admitted breach of trust in court in 2013 and was handed a six-month community payback order which did not require her to carry out any work but involved a compulsory course of psychosexual counselling. She was also placed on the sex offenders’ register for six months.

Last Thursday she phoned a BBC Radio Scotland phone-in to complain about the “stigma” that she faces following the incident.

Sprung has reportedly remarried at Cheylesmore Manor House in Coventry, in 2021, with building company owner Chris Atkinson, her new husband. The couple now have a young son and daughter.

A friend told the Daily Mail: “Eppie was at her lowest point after her conviction. She lost the career she loved, and her marriage collapsed. Now she is happy again and she is looking forward to the future. She has put what happened in the past.”

Last year Sprung was handed £7,530 through a grant from the National Lottery Community Fund to set up a website for her project, Next Chapter Scotland. The charity "‘helps anyone who has been involved with the criminal justice system to navigate the stigma and discrimination that they can face throughout their lives". She hopes to allow people in Scotland with criminal records to "share their experiences", and help them to "navigate discrimination".

And speaking on the radio phone-in this week she told of the stigma affecting her, stating: "I have a conviction for a sexual offence. I was a teacher and I had an affair with a 17-year-old pupil.

"So I do have experience of, kind of, living with the challenges that a person can face as a result of having a criminal record. I never experienced a custodial sentence, but I certainly did experience stigma. I mean, I had an exceptionally large amount of press coverage and media coverage for many, many years following my conviction.

"And I think I would say that was the most difficult thing I experienced. But I mean, of course, as with people with a conviction for a sexual offence particularly, face the highest degree of stigma. And so things like employment, even things like not being invited to my daughter’s friends’ birthday parties."

Back at the time in 2012, a pupil had called police after spotting the teacher leaving the end-of-term function with her young passenger. The fling cost Sprung her job of four years and ended her two-year marriage to her lecturer husband Ranald.

She then moved her young lover into the marital home – to the fury of his family, who claimed she bombarded their son with gifts, including football tops and Xbox games. However, she was said to be blindsided when the teen said they were not in a relationship and he later moved out.