A TEACHING assistant accused of having sex with a pupil in the back of her MINI wept as she told a court she had never been unfaithful to her husband.

A tearful Helen Turnbull, 35, told Teesside Crown Court she felt lonely after the breakdown of her marriage and enjoyed the attention given to her by the 16-year-old boy.

The court heard the pair swapped flirtatious and sexually explicit messages over the internet and arranged to meet up in secret after the teenager left school to study for his GCSEs.

The mother-of-two of Church View, Haswell, County Durham, admits kissing the pupil, who cannot be named for legal reasons, but denies having sex with him or performing sex acts on him.

“I have never had sex with (the boy). He has never sat in the back of my car. I haven’t done anything sexual other than kissing. It hasn’t happened,” she told the court.

“The very thought of it. I had been with the same person from 20 years ago. I haven’t had sex with anyone else – I couldn’t.”

Anne Richardson, defending, asked Ms Turnbull what she had expected to happen between her and the boy, to which she replied: “I didn’t expect anything to happen. To be honest I tried to stop it quite a few times."

Miss Richardson asked: “Why didn’t you just stop it?”

The defendant replied: “I did try but sometimes I felt so lonely. Just having that interaction and getting a reply – being able to chat back and forward.”

Ms Turnbull said when they met at an industrial estate, they would discuss clothes, music, his personal life and would smoke together.

She told the court that as the affair continued over the summer, she became increasingly worried that people would find out and became more needy.

She told the court: “I am so ashamed. The messages are appalling. I can read things, I can hear things but it is just not me.

“It is so far out of character I do not even recognise the person that was speaking them.

“I was being very needy. I needed to protect this life that I was hoping to have with just me and my children. I just felt he was going to take it all away.”

Ms Turnbull is alleged to have paid the boy special attention and admits giving him hugs and sweets in front of others, but insisted she was simply rewarding him for his good behaviour.

She denies three charges of sexual activity with a child by a person in a position of trust.

The trial continues.