A teacher who seduced a 15-year-old pupil was today banned from teaching but avoided a prison sentence after media coverage of the case was likened to a "Biblical stoning".

Dance teacher Nicola Prentice, now 25, from Sheffield, flirted with Dean Dainty and sent raunchy text and photo messages to him before luring him to after-school breakdancing lessons and visits to the pub.

They embarked on a 19-month relationship when Prentice was 22 and Mr Dainty - who waived his right to anonymity in an interview with the News of the World - was 15. They did not have sex until after Mr Dainty's 16th birthday.

The fling ended when Prentice became tired of the infatuated teenager’s emotional demands and his insistence that she leave her boyfriend, with whom she still lives.

Prentice, of Loughton, pleaded guilty to two counts of abusing her position of trust and was today given a 12-month suspended sentence by a judge at Leicester Crown Court.

She wept in the dock as she was also ordered to sign the Sex Offenders' Register which precludes her from working with children again.

Judge Michael Stokes, QC, sentencing, said that the complainant, now 19, had made it clear that he did not want her to go to jail.

He said he also believed she had suffered enough after Mr Dainty told his story in a tabloid newspaper, and described the media attention as "the equivalent of Biblical stoning".

He said: "Just think of the trouble and heartache you could have avoided if you had used your common sense and maintained your position as a teacher with this young man.

"I don’t want it to be thought in any quarter that a woman can expect to be treated any more leniently than a man. I suspect from all I have read about Dean Dainty that he would be mortified if he had felt he had caused you to go to prison."

As she left the dock, he added: "Don’t you dare do anything like this again."

The court had earlier been read a letter from the boy's mother, in which she wrote: "I know she has done wrong but I feel she has been punished enough by losing her position as a teacher. I do not think she is a bad person - she just made a mistake."

Prentice left the court with her boyfriend and made no comment to the waiting media.

Earlier in the hearing Edie Leonard, in mitigation, said: "There has been coverage in the press every day since the matter was last in court.

"She will never be employed as a teacher again and that is a great punishment to her. She has expressed her deep remorse and regret for the impact this has had on the victim.

"This was an extremely immature and inappropriate lapse of judgment on her behalf. It was never her intention to hurt this young man in any way."

Mr Dainty told the Sunday newspaper in an interview: "I realised she was just using me. She was the love of my life but she had destroyed my life.

"I was young and naive and thought I was living every schoolboy’s fantasy but it turned into a living hell."

Prentice pleaded guilty to the two offences between September 2001 and February 2002 at a hearing earlier this month.

Seven other offences of a similar nature, which allegedly came to light when the teenager went to the newspaper in May last year were ordered to lie on file.

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