Teacher Tamlyn May, who groomed and sexually abused an 11-year-old student, appears in the North Shore District Court. Photo / Sylvie Whinray
An Auckland primary school teacher who groomed an 11-year-old boy - sending nude photos before spending the night with him - can now be identified, four months after she was sentenced to home detention.
Interim suppression lapsed today for Tamlyn Estee May, 35, after she lost bids in both the District and High Courts to keep her name permanently secret.
May’s lawyer had argued in October that naming her would cause extreme hardship to her own family - some of whom she had not yet revealed the charges to - and that it would risk identifying her victim.
But the victim’s parents told North Shore District Court judge Paul Murray that they strongly opposed continued suppression. The judge agreed the risk was low that their son would be identified by naming May.
A new law that went into effect late last year requires consent from the victim for a person convicted of a sexual offence to receive permanent name suppression. But May was exempt from that law because of the timing of her charges and sentencing.
“The starting point is the principle of open justice,” Judge Murray said, noting that May had already been outed on social media despite interim suppression having been in place for the year leading up to her sentencing.
“Many in the community are already aware of your offending,” he explained, adding that the impact on her family while unfortunate would be a normal consequence of criminal offending rather than extreme hardship.
But she then appealed the decision to the High Court at Auckland.
In a decision issued on December 15, Justice James MacGillivray largely agreed with his District Court counterpart.
“As the Judge [Murray] concluded, ongoing shame and embarrassment are not uncommon for people associated with offenders,” Justice MacGillivray noted.
“There is no evidence that this will amount to extreme hardship for those associated with Ms May.”
But he also noted the advanced state of May’s pregnancy. To reduce stress in her third trimester, he agreed to allow interim suppression to continue until one month after her due date.
“The public interest in open justice and the views of the victim’s family are met by declining permanent suppression, but there is no urgency in permitting publication,” the judge explained.
May pleaded guilty last year to grooming for sexual conduct with a young person, which is punishable by up to three years’ imprisonment, and indecency with a boy under 12, which carries a 10-year maximum sentence.
The boy was not the defendant’s pupil but attended the same school, which cannot be identified for legal reasons.
Court documents state they messaged each other via social media and Google Docs, used by teachers for grading, for an indeterminate period prior to the boy “asking her out” in August 2024.
Before that, the teacher had repeatedly encouraged the child to do so.
“We would make a good couple,” she wrote at one point, according to the summary of facts she agreed to.
“If you ask me out, I’ll say ‘yes’,” she said at another point.
After the boy did so, the woman repeatedly told him she loved him.
The defendant attempted to cover her tracks by communicating through Snapchat, which auto-erases messages, and by erasing their real-time conversations on Google Docs.
Court documents outlined in detail a 24-day period in August and September 2024 that followed the shift to what the defendant called “dating”.
The two met unsupervised on multiple occasions, including walks at an Auckland park in which she held the boy’s hand.
During one scheduled walk, the two decided to instead go to a home belonging to the defendant’s parents, who were on an overseas trip.
The two wrestled, at which point the teacher grabbed the boy and kissed him.
She also, during that period, sent multiple explicit photos of herself partially or fully undressed, telling him: “Don’t tell anyone, this is just for you”.
On September 6, 2024, she slept in the same bed as the boy while staying at his father’s house, she acknowledged in the agreed facts.
Defence lawyer David Jones, KC, argued during the sentencing hearing that May had been suffering a psychological issue in which she saw herself, as if in virtual reality, as a fellow 11-year-old.
It stemmed from trauma in her own childhood, he said, describing the situation as “trauma-bonding”.
May was born in South Africa but moved to New Zealand as a teenager to flee violence there, the court was told.
“We’re not talking about some sort of predatory behaviour or interest,” Jones argued.
“She had a real interest in helping young people with behavioural issues. And she was of the same ilk. She would regress back to the age where she was 11.”
There was no need for a custodial sentence, or for May’s name to be included on the sex offender registry, he argued.
Jones pointed repeatedly to the case of fellow teacher Myah Adams, who was sentenced in the Auckland District Court earlier that year to a short term of imprisonment before the High Court decided on appeal that she should instead serve home detention.
In that case, Jones said, the offending was much more serious because it involved sex acts on the 15-year-old victim. The most physical contact that was proven in the May case, he said, was that his client and the boy inappropriately held hands.
Crown solicitor Alysha McClintock noted that an important distinction between the two cases is the ages of the two victims. In the current case, she pointed out, the victim was much younger and the defendant older.
“This offending has caused a large amount of anger and hurt,” she said, describing the conduct as “on a path to doing something more sexual”.
However, she acknowledged that home detention was an option for the judge based on prior cases, including Adams’.
Ultimately, the judge agreed to the defence requests to keep May off the sex offender registry and out of prison.
But it came with an admonishment: “Your offending has had wide and devastating impacts.”
The judge pointed to victim impact statements that had been read aloud in court earlier.
“My son’s innocence and trust have been irreparably damaged,” the boy’s mother wrote, describing the “unimaginable betrayal” of a teacher who was inflicting trauma while pretending to help the boy.
“Justice in this case must ... send a clear message that such actions are intolerable.”
The boy’s father described the weekly hour-and-a-half round trip he takes each week to take his son to ongoing counselling sessions.
He recalled seeing changes in his son’s behaviour prior to the defendant’s “self-absorbed, manipulating, cold-hearted actions” being exposed.
She had tried to convince the parents to blame the school and suggested she help homeschool the boy - all so she could get better access to him, he alleged.
“She doesn’t have any remorse for the stomach-churning abuse she subjected our son to,” he wrote. “I believe [she] should be banned from going anywhere near any school in this country.”
While acknowledging the family’s frustration, Judge Murray said he had to weigh that against psychological reports finding her to be a low risk of reoffending.
He ordered six months’ home detention, followed by six months of post-detention conditions. It reflected credits for her guilty pleas, rehabilitation efforts, lack of prior convictions and remorse.
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.
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