A music teacher who had a lesbian affair with a 15-year-old pupil will be allowed to continue to see the girl after she is released from jail.

Despite the parents’ fears that Helen Goddard, 26, will try to rekindle her relationship with their daughter, a judge rejected a prosecution request to ban the teacher from seeing the girl for five years.

As Goddard sat crying in the dock, Judge Anthony Pitt said that it would be draconian on the girl, who turns 16 next week, to impose a sexual prevention order banning the teacher from seeing her. The court was told that the pair were still in love.

Goddard started the relationship with the child after teaching her to play the trumpet at a £13,000-a-year public school for girls. During their five-month relationship, Goddard, known as “the Jazz Lady” at the school, had taken the child on a secret romantic break to Paris, where they went on a Gay Pride march. She even had sex with her at the homes of both the girl’s separated parents.

When police raided the teacher’s London flat they found various sexual toys including vibrators and fluffy handcuffs. Mobile phones seized showed that they had exchanged hundreds of obscene text messages.

Goddard broke down in tears as she was told that she would serve half of a 15-month sentence before being considered for release.

In a statement read to Southwark Crown Court, the girl’s parents said that their daughter was now “the subject of intense teenage curiosity” and because of the “immature and impulsive actions of Miss Goddard had been deprived of the opportunity for the normal development of sexual relations”.

In response to the request for an order banning Goddard from seeing the girl for five years, the judge said: “I am conscious of the fact that whatever one thinks about what happened in this case, the girl appears to inevitably have suffered from what happened and this matter coming to light, and I have her interest in mind as well when I decided not to make this order. I think it would be draconian and unnecessarily cruel to her as well.”

It is illegal for an adult in a position of trust, such as a teacher, to have physical relationships with those they are responsible for if they are under 18.

The affair came to light when a parent wrote to the school, which cannot be named, reporting the affair and urging them to act quickly.

Goddard had become a popular tutor after beginning teaching there in 2006 and starting a jazz group. She was warned by her department head to be careful of becoming too popular as some children might compete for her attention.

It was claimed that it was the girl who had instigated the relationship with Goddard, who had studied music at Trinity College of Music, London, and had been one of only five young English musicians invited to play at the opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympics in 2000. The girl told police that they became intimate after sharing their problems over coffee and on walks on Hampstead Heath.

In a statement, the mother said that it was first thought that Goddard’s influence was good. “She appeared to be thriving and happy for the first time in a very long time,” she said. “I felt that the allegations were a vicious rumour and I couldn’t believe any teacher at the school could do such a thing.”

Regina Naughton, for the prosecution, said: “They began to have feelings which were not expected. Miss Goddard said she didn’t see her as a 15-year-old and they would have to wait until she was 16, or for three years. But flirting and the sending of text messages to each other began. The teenager described them kissing and then sleeping with each other, and it was at that point that the girl said she wanted a sexual relationship.

“The girl was told that if she felt anything was uncomfortable at any time they could stop. But the girl said it felt right,” she added. During a trip to Paris the child told her parents that she was staying with her sister when in fact the pair had checked into a hotel and gone on a Gay Pride march.

Anthony Heaton-Armstrong, for the defence, said that Goddard was very remorseful for her actions and the psychological injury caused to the pupil.

Goddard admitted six specimen counts of inappropriate sexual activity with a child between February and July 2009. She was disqualified from working with children and ordered to sign the sexual offenders register for ten years.

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