A female PE teacher and her husband who she had sex with when he was a 13-year-old schoolboy, before marrying him at 16 and having a child together, have divorced after over 5 years together.

The two, from the city of Wiener Neustadt, south of the Austrian capital Vienna, were frequent guests on talk shows throughout their relationship that began when Erwin Szabo, at the time 13, confided in his stepfather that his handball teacher Renata Juras had been having sex with him.

Erwin’s stepfather called the police, accusing her of seducing an underage boy.

Under Austrian law, the age of consent is 14, She was prosecuted and given a 22-month suspended sentence. The couple said if they had waited a week, he would have been 14, and there would have been no prosecution.

Erwin supported her during the court case and they later had a daughter in 2012. She is called Naomi and is now aged 7. A few months after Naomi’s birth, the pair got married.

But it has now been revealed that the pair, who were frequently in the media, have divorced and now live separate lives.

Erwin confirmed it was true, opening up about it for the first time this week, saying: “It just happened that it wasn’t working anymore between us.”

He said he had initially moved back in with his mother Judith in 2016. She had supported the relationship, and a year later they divorced, but had kept it quiet.

He added: “It was nothing to do with the age difference, I just noticed that while we were married there were many things that I wasn’t doing, that were important to me, including contact with my family and friends from previously. She also wasn’t such a big fan of my love for physical education and fitness.”

He currently works in a construction firm and is single, although he had a relationship for two years with a girlfriend who was the same age. It was also revealed that Renata also now has a new man in her life, somebody who is the same age and works in the property business.

The former couple do not have much contact at the moment but Erwin is still paying maintenance for their daughter, Naomi, and he added: “I regret nothing and I’m really happy and proud that Naomi is here. She is always with me at weekends, we enjoy time together on the PlayStation and play football or watch TV together.”

At the time, Erwin, who is now 23, said: “I saw her on the first day she arrived. As soon as I saw her I thought to myself, what a woman – she was so lovely. I knew that she was the one for me. I could not get her out of my mind and I instantly found out as much as I could about her – and discovered that she was the new sports teacher.

“I then found out about joining [the handball team] although I’ve never been interested in the sport before and two weeks later I turned up to the team practice.”

For her part, Renata, now 51, said: “That was the first time I saw him. My first thought when I saw him was that he cannot possibly be a youngster who was born in 1996. He just seemed so much older and more mature than a boy of that age – he towered over all the other youngsters and physically was just so much more ahead of the rest of them. But there was nothing in my mind about anything more than that – as a professional trainer I saw straight away that he was a natural talent on the sports field and was really good for the team and that was it. Nothing else.”

She said she slowly realised that he was always watching her, and had a crush on her, and then found that she felt the same. She said she had then discussed it with her daughters, one of whom was in the same school as Erwin, and only after they had said they could accept it had the affair started.

Erwin says being a father has taught him that it must be difficult for his parents. He said: “Every boyfriend that my daughter brings home will certainly get a hard time from me regardless of how old he is.”

He also revealed that he has taken up handball training again, this time with a man as the trainer.

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