A STUDENT who slept with his teacher and was even in the birthing suite when she delivered their child has been awarded £4 million in damages in California.

The former high school student was paid the seven-figure in one of the largest single-victim sex abuse settlements by a public agency after telling the court he felt “physically” ill when reflecting on how his former teacher Laura Whitehurst manipulated him.

Whitehurst, 29, was arrested in July 2013 and was charged with 41 counts of unlawful sex acts involving three students, serving six months in prison.

She pleaded guilty to four counts of unlawful sexual intercourse and two counts of oral copulation with a person under 18 involving three boys while teaching at Citrus Valley and Redlands high schools.

But her former student and father of her child has since sued the school authority, claiming it had known about the relationship and failed to warn his family.

He claimed the relationship first started in 2012 when he was 16-years-old with his teacher often supplying him with alcohol and even telling him that she wanted to kiss him while on a school trip to Disneyland.

The pair were involved in a continued sexual relationship for about a year.

The teenager was even present at the birth of the pair’s child with Whitehurst calling her pregnancy a “miracle” as she did not believe she could get pregnant, the LA Times reported.

The lawsuit also claimed a picture of the student in the birthing suite with his teacher was circulated around the school.

“Physically, I feel sick to my stomach thinking about the manipulation I was subjected to,” the teen told a court when urging prosecutors to reject Whitehurst’s plea bargain.

The seven-figure payout, which is equivalent to about £4,588,033, was in part determined by the school district’s failure to act on reports suggesting Whitehurst was engaged in relationships with her students.

Prosecutors alleged the school district investigated reports but failed to pass on information to police or social workers.

The former high school student’s attorney Vince Finaldi said “The size of this settlement represents the gravity of the damage done to this young victim and his family and it also highlights the extreme malfeasance and neglect by school officials who turned a blind eye to the criminal conduct of a teacher and failed to protect a student.”

District spokesman Tom DeLapp acknowledged the settlement was “high” but said it could have been even higher.

He said: “We felt there could be serious damage to the reputation of a very fine school district if the plaintiff’s lawyers were allowed to drag the district and its employees through the mud all over again,” Mr DeLapp said.

“In the long run, $6 million is high, but it could have been much higher if this had been left to an empathetic jury in another city looking past the facts to find a financial scapegoat for the unprofessional, criminal actions of one individual.”

Whitehurst remains on probation and is now required to register as a sex offender.

She shares custody of the child with the former student, who is now 21.

In April, a female student from Idaho was awarded $2.5 million after alleging she was raped by her teacher.

Emily Keenan, who is not 19, said: “I lived in fear, was depressed all the time, acted out in many bad ways”.

She was 11 at the time of the alleged assaults.