A teacher has been found not guilty of abusing her position by having sex with a pupil.

Deborah Lowe, 54, sobbed in the dock as the verdict was read out.

The divorced mother-of-two, who also worked as a senior manager for stewarding at Manchester City on matchdays, had denied five counts of engaging in sexual activity with a student when being a person in a position of trust between September 2015 and June 2016.

But a jury took just two hours and seven minutes to acquit Mrs Lowe, who was head of year, following a week-long trial at Manchester’s Minshull Street Crown Court.

She was found not guilty of sexual activity with a child.

Lowe, a former air stewardess, of Elmsbed Caravan Park in Poynton, Cheshire , admitted she had sex with the teenager, who cannot be named for legal reasons, but said he had left school and was 17 when it started.

She told the trial she was having ‘some sort of midlife crisis’ while her barrister said she was guilty only of being a ‘bloody fool’.

Mrs Lowe, who had no previous convictions, had come into contact with the boy as part of her non-teaching role in pastoral care at the school, where she was head of year, when he got into trouble.

The teenager, now 18, alleged they swapped numbers while he was a pupil at the school and that he went on to have phone sex that night and again a few nights later before having a full sexual relationship.

He described having rough sex at her flat and then at her caravan in Poynton.

She liked him to call her ‘sl*t’, he told the trial.

​Giving evidence during the trial, she said she ‘just wanted to help him’ and had ‘gone above and beyond’ to do so.

Speaking about her first sexual encounter with the teenager, Mrs Lowe told the trial: “He said he missed me. He had been thinking about me a lot and then we kissed.

“And I am very embarrassed to say that we ended up in bed together, which I regret.”

​She added: “I’m mortified. I’m embarrassed. I think I was having some sort of midlife crisis. I have never done anything like that before. I don’t know why I did it. I am so ashamed.”

​The trial heard that, after a friend suggested in a WhatsApp message she was ‘sh****g’ the teenager, Mrs Lowe replied: “Can I just say for the minute I am not s****ing him and I am merely a mother figure. However if not in the too distant future he wants to discuss the merits of an older woman I will be there for him.”

​H​er friend​ replied​: “Yummy. Can’t say I blame you.”

Mrs Lowe then replied with emojis of a bottle of baby lotion and a pair of handcuffs​.​

She told the court she was ‘flattered by the attention’ and described this as a ‘silly’ and lighthearted conversation as she had not had a partner, or had sex, for nine years.

“It had become a joke that I hadn’t had a boyfriend since I got divorced,”​ she said.​

Mrs Lowe sent him more than 300 text messages between March and May 2016​.

​During the trial, the judge directed the jury to find the defendant not guilty of sexual activity with a child after the teenager admitted to the jurors he must have been 16, not 15 as he had originally claimed, when their relationship began. ​

The trial heard she bought the teen shoes, clothes and a tattoo even though he was too young to have one and also promised to take him to Bali.

They swapped numbers, had phone sex and then full sex on a number of occasions at her caravan and also at the teen’s home where he lived with his mother,

The boy’s mother called police after she found a card Lowe had posted to her son to his home address.

He had blocked her on social media and she wrote on the card: “Who else can I be a sl*t with?”

Her accuser was branded a lying drug dealer in court. He had one caution for possessing cocaine and was sacked for stealing in a job Mrs Lowe arranged for him.

When police first spoke to him, he claimed the sex had taken place after he had left school.

During his police video interview, he changed his story and said the sex had started when he was 15. During cross-examination at Lowe’s trial, he said he must have been 16 when it started.

He admitted he had spoken to a journalist from The Sun but denied a suggestion

that he was experiencing money troubles and changed his story to make it more marketable.

The jurors heard that he contacted the tattooist Mrs Lowe was paying and suggested he charge her £600 rather than £400 as he was ‘skint’.

During his closing speech, Neil Usher, said that ‘happily’ for his client there wasn’t another charge on the indictment where she was ‘charged with the offence of being a bloody fool when going through a mid-life crisis when a 17-year-old young man contacted you in his words because he felt horny.’

Had she faced such a charge, he said their task would be ‘straight-forward’ and they would find ‘no difficulty’ in convicting her of being ‘silly, inappropriate and stupid’.

Deborah Lowe walked from court without speaking to reporters but her lawyer released a statement on her behalf.

It said: "The last nine months have been extremely upsetting for me and my family. I would like to take this opportunity to thank them for their loving care. I'm grateful for the support of former colleagues, friends and past pupils who sent messages of support.

"Although incredibly stressful and upsetting at times, I'm extremely pleased that I have had the opportunity to clear my name and I'm delighted that the jury acquitted me of all counts.

"I'm very grateful for my legal team who from the start identified the flaws in the case against me and robustly challenged the prosecution case.

"I wish to put the case behind me as best I can and spend some time with my family and friends."