An acclaimed headteacher is facing jail after being convicted of having sex with two teenage boys in the 1980s.

Anne Lakey, 55, was found guilty of 13 counts of indecent assault on a boy of 13 or 14 and another boy aged 15 over a three-year period following a trial at Teesside crown court.

She has been suspended as chief executive of the Durham Federation, which is in charge of two secondary schools, since the younger complainant accused her in email in December 2012.

Lakey, from Stanley, County Durham, was a national leader in education, lauded for improving the exam performance at her schools.

But she seduced a boy in his school uniform when he was 13 or 14 after letting him watch her bathe then encouraged another boy to sneak into her tent during a camp. She took both complainants’ virginity.

Lakey, who was a history and RE teacher in Sunderland at the time of the allegations, denied wrongdoing but admitted having a sexual relationship with the older complainant when he was 18 and she was in her early 30s.

The younger complainant branded her a “disgusting sexual monster” in an email to her school which sparked her suspension and the police investigation. He claimed she took his virginity when he was 13 and told police they repeatedly had sex at her home in her marital bed. Lakey has been married three times.

She asked him to call him “mommy” and rang his school pretending to be his mother when he was playing truant to be with her, he said. He named a second victim, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, and who told police he was also abused by Lakey.

The second, older complainant said Lakey took his virginity in a tent after she encouraged him to creep over in the middle of the night. He recalled feeling a mixture of emotions after the “tumultuous night”.

“On the one hand, I was happy with my little self that I managed to lose my virginity before I was 16, which seemed really important at the time,” he said. “On the other hand, everything was over so quickly. It should have been a bit more interesting than that. It was a bit of a confusing mix of emotions as I left the tent.” He said they had sex regularly at her home after that.

When police began investigating the younger complainant’s claims, Lakey rang him to persuade him to lie to detectives. The complainant recalled: “The delivery was like A-level psychology 101. There was the initial ‘My poor father, lost my mother’ – a trump card to play.

“There was ‘my career, my daughter, my husband. I’ve definitely not had sex with any other children since’ was mentioned early on. It was laid on thick, emotionally at the start, towards the end there was flattery alongside that.”

Caroline Goodwin, prosecuting, asked how he felt about what happened to him. “The phone call really summed up the whole thing,” he said. “Here is somebody who has not spoken to me for 20 years who thought she could get me to pick up the phone and lie to the police, 20 years after. If that doesn’t give you an idea of the control she had over us lads, I don’t know what would.”

It can now be reported that Lakey was tried last year at Durham crown court on charges connected to the younger man’s allegations. A jury was discharged after failing to reach verdicts.

A retrial was ordered and the older man’s allegations were added to the indictment, with this trial taking place at Teesside crown court.