A TEACHING assistant admitted replying to a schoolboy’s text containing his naked photo with saucy pictures of herself.

Instead of reporting the texts to her bosses at Clacton Coastal Academy, Elaine McKay, 58, continued to exchange explicit pictures with the 15- year-old boy for a year.

She also confessed to performing sexual acts on herself as he watched on Skype.

Prosecutors at Chelmsford Crown Court said she could not control her lust and the pair ended up having sex.

McKay, of Banister Close, Clacton, broke down in tears yesterday as she confessed to sending the boy sexual photographs of herself.

Maria Dineen, defending, said: “You accept there were messages and pictures sent by you and activity on Skype that was of a sexual nature.’’ Mum-of-two McKay, who has two grandchildren, replied through tears: “Yes. Sorry, yes.’’ McKay, who has been suspended from her job, insisted the boy started it by asking for a picture of her.

She told jurors: “He asked: ‘Can I send you a picture of me?’ I said: ‘I don’t want a picture of you’. He said he was just going to send one anyway.’’ McKay said the boy sent a picture of his privates and she deleted it.

She said: “I was totally shocked and I text back saying: ‘What are you doing?’’’ She admitted she failed to report it to the school’s head of department as she should have.

Instead, over the next year or so, she sent a string of provocative photographs to the teenager, including naked snaps and one of her in a compromising pose with a cucumber.

She told jurors: “He kept pestering and asking me: ‘Please, just one picture, just one picture, even if it’s just a pair of knickers’.’’ McKay said there came a time when she “effectively gave him what he was asking for’’.

The first picture she sent him was of her shower with underwear hanging inadvertently in the background, but things escalated.

She admitted sending him a photograph of herself biting a cucumber, but insisted this was a jokey picture of her lunch.

Asked why she sent the pictures, McKay said: “I have no idea whatsoever.

This is my regret. I don't know the reason.’’ The boy claimed the pair had sex after McKay visited his home to drop around a cake to his family.

His relatives were not in and the teenager said he went and had a shower.

He claimed on his returnMcKay was waiting in his bedroom, ripped off his towel and had sex with him.

Richard Scott, prosecuting, said: “McKay had gone galloping beyond the parameters of acceptable behaviour in sending him photos of her and performing sexual acts for his gratification on Skype.”

He said their relationship went beyond “breezy flirtation’’ and a “powerful sexual attraction’’ operated between them.

Mr Scott accused McKay of having a lack of willpower and judgment.

She said her desire for the boy was so potent she lied to his family about their illicit affair.

He said: “She just couldn’t help herself.

It is a triumph of lust over good sense.’’ McKay denies having sex with the schoolboy and insisted she had never been alone in a room with him.

She denies intentionally touching a boy aged 15 by having full sex with him and inciting a child to engage in sexual activity.

She has admitted causing a child to look at sexually explicit images.

"She took the towel off me and we had sex"

! The trial continues.