She doesn't like to describe what happened as a mistake because she believes it minimises the seriousness of her offence.

"I didn't slip and fall over - I made some really bad choices," she explains.

In 2012, aged 26, Eppie Sprung was arrested and struck off the teaching register after it emerged she had had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old, who was a pupil at St Joseph's College in Dumfries.

She pleaded guilty to breach of trust and was placed on the sex offenders register until the end of her six-month community payback order - she served four months.

The relationship ended in 2015 and cost her the career in teaching she adored, her marriage and her name.

Eleven years have passed but she says she is resigned to the fact that her conviction will "never be spent in any meaningful way" due, in part, to the huge amount of press interest it generated. Stories nowadays aren't tomorrow's chip paper, they have infinite reach.

The situation has not been helped by her unusual name. She says many with convictions opt to change theirs but she decided not to.

"The time after my arrest was absolutely horrific," says the 37-year-old mother-of-two, who is now remarried and lives in Dumfries.

"Teaching was my identity, I loved it. The punishment is never really over."

It is the first time she has agreed to be interviewed, and she admits to a fitful night's sleep before we meet virtually on a Zoom screen.

She says she was accepting of the media interest that followed her arrest and conviction but says the length of time the follow-up stories continued, which she says contained many inaccuracies, was unfair.

"Three years after my offence they printed a picture of my bedroom in the tabloids and five years after my offence they called me a working girl because I'd set up a business," she says.

"Almost ten years after my offence, I closed down a community interest company I'd set up. It had only ever been a dormant company and yet they printed that my business had shut down which was completely false. I'm very successful in my self-employment.

The Herald: Eppie Sprung

"For many years the tabloid press sensationalised my offence and that meant that everybody knew who I was, UK-wide and I don't exactly have an obscure name."

She says that she was incredibly lucky in that a bar owner "took a punt on me" and offered her work after her conviction and she was then offered a job with a charity.

However, she has "more examples that I can list" of being turned down for opportunities.

"Employment is such a struggle for people with a conviction," she says.

"Any employer can, with no legal recourse, just decide they don't want to hire someone and that is incredibly hard for people.

"We don't serve a sentence and you are allowed to continue with your life and contribute to society.

"Because of the coverage, employers very often are concerned that I bring with me a reputational risk.

"If five years after my offence they are still writing about me, it reminds people."

She says the early support from the chief executive of the charity she worked for led her to her current career. She went self-employed five years after her conviction as a business growth specialist, working with charities.

"It impacts on other people as well," she says. "I have examples of where I've worked alongside other third-sector consultants and we've been given a contract and then maybe a week in the client withdrew." She says this was happening as recently as four years ago.

Her spent conviction affects many other areas of her life, she says. Her house insurance was cancelled after she disclosed it, which means she must seek out costlier, specialist firms.

"I had fertility treatment to conceive my daughter and in order to be allowed to have treatment you have to answer a series of questions about whether you have a criminal record,” she added.

"If I were to conceive naturally, no one asks those questions."

Her experiences of navigating life after a conviction led her to set up Next Chapter Scotland, with lottery support, which aims to support people to move on with their lives after crime. 

Apex Scotland, which works to reduce re-offending, described the charity as "an invaluable resource" for people going through the justice system who can "struggle to get answers to questions about so many issues and concerns".

 

The Herald:

She says setting this up came with its own challenges because of the fact that the charity board made the decision that at least around 50% of the Trustees must have lived experience of the criminal justice system.

"We first applied to a bank - which will remain nameless - to get an account and they withdrew our application,” she says.

“We then applied as a charity to a membership organisation - again I won't name it - and they declined our membership application."

READ MORE:

 

She says another reason for setting up the group is to show her children that she isn't hiding her conviction and is also trying to create something positive out of it.

"I'm very aware that they are going to have to face the stigma of my offence and I made a very conscious decision that if they were going to have to deal with that, it would be better for them to have a mum who is using that experience for good,” she says.

She talks about the link between trauma and crime and discloses that she suffered abuse as a teenager and says a requirement to have counselling after her conviction helped her process this.

"When people make choices that they know are going to implode their whole life, I think it's fair to say that they aren't thinking rationally," she says."I believe that everybody does the best they can and when they aren't doing the ideal then there is a reason for that."

Asked if she thinks a male teacher would have been treated differently, she says she can't answer that question but says her arrest and conviction led to a lot of unwanted male attention, which extended to stalking.

She says that during her worst moments, she is thankful that there was a voice in her head telling her, "That I really had some value still" and says she was incredibly lucky to have the full support of her family and close friends.

"They are incredible and I am forever grateful to them," she says. "There are people involved with our board who have not been so lucky and have been cut off from their families.

"It's fair to say that my family kept me alive.

“All people have value and if they can hold on to that knowledge, they can hold on to their life,” she says.

She would like to see changes in equalities laws, which she says allow employers to discriminate against candidates with spent convictions.

"I am well educated, I have a secure background - I have all of these things that I can put to good use to help make the system a bit better for people," she says.

"We want to help people have accessible information and bring people together to foster hope and we want to help people to defend their rights when their rights are being violated.

"One in three men and one in ten women they estimate have a criminal record. Those numbers are really high.

"I would hope we reach a point where society and the media is that bit more compassionate and that little bit more accepting of the fact that people can make very bad choices and yet that doesn't define their entire existence.

"Once they have served their sentence they should be allowed to contribute as a member of society."

www.nextchapterscotland.org.uk - the website will go live on Friday.