A 37-year-old former high-school teacher from Newcastle, New South Wales, has pleaded guilty to multiple child sex offences after admitting she repeatedly had sexual intercourse with a 15-year-old male student and later attempted to persuade him to lie to police.
Karly Rae appeared in Newcastle District Court on Thursday, 27 November 2025, with her eight-week-old baby and formally entered guilty pleas to seven serious charges, abandoning her earlier not-guilty stance. The sudden plea change means she will now be sentenced in March 2026 instead of facing a scheduled trial in August 2026.
According to agreed facts tendered in court and reported by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), the offending occurred throughout 2024 while Rae was employed as a teacher at a school in the Newcastle area. The victim was a Year 10 student aged 15 at the time.
Prosecutors told the court Rae groomed the teenager using Snapchat and Instagram, exchanging sexually explicit messages and photographs. One message from Rae read: “Maybe we could have one last rendezvous before school goes back. I’ll bring my toy.” In another exchange she wrote that contacting him was “too tempting” and accepted full responsibility for continuing the communication.
The sexual abuse escalated to multiple acts of sexual intercourse at various locations around Newcastle, including in October 2024 — the same month police first arrested and charged her.
After being granted bail following her initial arrest, Rae contacted the victim by telephone on several occasions in an attempt to influence his evidence. During those calls she allegedly tried to persuade the boy to provide a false version of events to investigators. The teenager disclosed the calls to his mother, and a cousin who had seen some of the social-media messages also alerted the boy’s parents. This led to Rae’s second arrest in June 2025 for attempting to pervert the course of justice.
At her June bail hearing, Justice Hament Dhanji SC noted: “In the course of those calls, it’s alleged [Rae] sought to persuade the complainant to give a false version of events.” Despite the new charge, Rae was again granted conditional bail because she was heavily pregnant at the time.
Rae formally pleaded guilty to the following charges:
Three counts of sexual intercourse with a person under 16 (child between 14 and 16 years)
One count of sexual touching of a child between 10 and 16 years
Possessing child abuse material
Transmitting child abuse material
Grooming a child under 16 for unlawful sexual activity
Attempting to pervert the course of justice
Defence barrister Mark Ramsland asked Judge Roy Ellis to prioritise sentencing because his client had an eight-week-old infant with her in court. The identity and paternity of the baby have not been disclosed in any public reporting.
During earlier proceedings Rae had claimed she was unaware the victim was under 16, despite him being a student at the school where she taught. That claim was not repeated during Thursday’s guilty plea hearing.
Rae has been banned from any unsupervised contact with persons under 16 as part of her bail conditions and was sacked from her teaching position following her initial arrest.
The case has drawn significant attention in Newcastle, where community members previously expressed outrage when Rae was photographed smiling outside court after being granted bail while pregnant.
Sentencing is listed for 20 March 2026 before Judge Roy Ellis in Newcastle District Court. The maximum penalty for sexual intercourse with a child aged 14–16 is 10 years imprisonment, while attempting to pervert the course of justice carries a maximum of 14 years, and the grooming and child abuse material offences also attract substantial penalties. A custodial sentence is considered almost certain.
