A Victorian primary school teacher was so obsessed with one of her 10-year-old students she wrote him love letters detailing her "infinite love" for him.
Diane Marie Brimble, 47, of Hamilton, even had the boy's name tattooed in an infinity symbol on her chest.
Her obsession was so bizarre that even the Victorian County Court judge who sentenced her to a community corrections order was at a loss to understand her behaviour.
"I am at a complete loss to understand why you engaged in such utterly inappropriate conduct which must dismay every parent," Judge Mark Taft said on Thursday.
"You breached the trust reposed in you by (the boy's) parents who properly expected that a classroom teacher would care for their son in a professional manner.
"Your offending occurred in a context of obsessive and entirely misdirected affection for (the boy) which you described as `love'."
The mother of eight even tried to move her own children to another primary school when the boy changed schools.
Judge Taft rejected the suggestion her behaviour could be explained by her inexperience as a new teacher and her naivety.
Brimble was convicted of one offence, committing an indecent act with a child under 16, but the judge and prosecution agreed that would not warrant a jail term.
It related to one occasion when she kissed and hugged the boy, before asking him to have sex with her.
The boy rejected her advances and pushed her away, telling her that he was not old enough but she told him "you are when you're at my house", the court heard.
Brimble wrote letters declaring her undying love for the boy.
"I love you more than you will ever know. There will never be anyone else in my heart," one letter said.
"Though you will be far away when I leave I will still see you every night in my dreams just as I do now."
The letter ended with: "Infinite love, forever in my heart. Always and forever."
Judge Taft said the letters and tattoo demonstrated the scale of Brimble's obsessive behaviour.
"It beggars belief that a mature aged woman should write such a letter to her 10-year-old student," Judge Taft said.
"(The boy) states that you made him feel uncomfortable and that on some nights he worried and sometimes felt angry or really sad," he also said.
Brimble has been placed on the Sex Offenders Register for eight years and will be forced to undergo 200 hours unpaid community work and assessment for mental health treatment as part of the two-year corrections order.
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