A primary school teacher who was fired for concealing her brief relationship with a convicted paedophile married him five months after being fired.
Last year, Jessica Patullo, 29, was expelled from Kelvedon Hatch Community Primary School in Brentwood, Essex, for neglecting to disclose that her new partner Josh Perry, 30, had been found in possession of pornographic photos of young children in 2019.
Before being married to the registered sex offender in September of the following year, she supported him despite losing her job and having to retrain as a nail technician.
After a disciplinary panel determined that Patullo had fallen “significantly below the standards of integrity expected of a teacher” due to her failure to reveal Perry’s background, Patullo was permanently removed from the teaching register last month.
She had been teaching her class while covertly dating a paedophile for 13 months. In November 2024, she finally came clean to the headteacher after a police officer told her to. Five months later, she was let go.
Patullo spent seven years working as a primary school teacher in and around Brentwood, most recently teaching Year 4 at Kelvedon Hatch, which is close to her family’s house.
In October 2023, she began dating Perry, initially unaware that he had been caught in 2019 with pornographic photos of children in elementary school.
However, Perry was ready to reveal his background, telling his current fiancée early on in their relationship that he had been placed on the Sex Offenders‘ Register for five years in 2021.
Even after discovering the truth, Patullo made the decision to pursue the developing romance.
She had to decide whether to tell the school that she was now seeing a convicted paedophile or to keep it a secret.
Perry was instructed to question his probation officer if Perry’s offence would affect her employment and if she should report it to the school.
According to reports, the officer promised Perry that Patullo’s career would not be hampered by the relationship and that she was not required to divulge the knowledge.
Patullo claimed that she took this advise at its value and didn’t challenge it further; as a result, she kept quiet and continued instructing her class of students.
At her disciplinary hearing, Patullo claimed to have kept her personal and professional lives “incredibly separate” and to have taken precautions to keep Perry away from pupils.
If he ever drove her to the school, she said he “would not come near the school” and would “drop her at the top of the road.”
She acknowledged, though, that it took her “some time” to realise that Perry wasn’t actually drawn to kids.
She acknowledged that there had been a “safeguarding risk” in continuing the relationship up until that moment.
According to Patullo’s declaration to the Teacher Regulation Authority (TRA), a police officer gave her additional “assurance” in April 2024 that she was not required to reveal the information.
Patullo said that she had “made it clear” to the officer conducting Perry’s check that the school was “unaware” of his conviction at the time.
However, on a subsequent police visit in November 2024, the pair were informed that, considering Perry’s record and Patullo’s position at a primary school, the council ought to have been informed about the relationship.
On November 26, 2024, Patullo confessed everything to the headteacher after being instructed to notify the school.
Patullo was fired on April 30, 2025, after the school called her to a disciplinary hearing in February 2025 and submitted the matter to the council.
A few weeks prior to her termination, Patullo started promoting a new nail salon, anticipating that her teaching job would end and she would need to find a new source of income.
Even though Perry’s act had destroyed Patullo’s career, she married him in September 2025, five months after being expelled from the institution.
Following a hearing with the TRA last month, she was permanently barred from teaching.
Patullo admitted that by failing to notify the school of Perry’s offence as soon as she learned of it, she had committed “an error of professional judgement.”
She clarified that she “did not think that was a safeguarding concern that needed to be brought to the school” at the time.
She stated that she was more aware of safeguarding issues “on a day-to-day basis” since she was “so focused on the children.”
However, the panel determined that a teacher with “any element of safeguarding training” would have found it “clear and obvious” to report a relationship with a convicted paedophile.
They came to the conclusion that Patullo had engaged in grave misconduct by failing to “err on the side of caution.”
Although the panel concluded that Patullo had “brought the teaching profession into disrepute,” it did not recommend a permanent ban.
Marc Cavey, the decision-maker, disagreed and imposed a ban, arguing that any less severe penalty would erode “public confidence in the profession.”
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