Sam Hesler is friendly.
She smiles and chats about the weather outside.
She looks like any other mum in her 50's.
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Polite, punctual, she has a quick cigarette outside court before her trial starts each day.
Casual but smart, Hesler wears a cardigan with jeans, sometimes with a colourful cotton scarf around her neck.
Peering over her glasses, she keeps her cool, politely denying every lurid accusation put to her.
She doesn't raise her voice, there's no hint of a temper as the prosecution barrister lays into every detail of her personal life.
When she accidentally sits down in court, she immediately says, 'sorry' to Judge Paul Watson, as he reminds her to stand.
She isn't tearful, she doesn't ask questions or make demands of her barrister.
The only sign that something is amiss is through her admission, ''my anxiety is through the roof'.
She sits alone waiting for her trial to start each day; Hesler told her daughter not to come- ''I don't want to put her through it, if you know what I mean'.
Hesler divorced her husband Mark some time ago. ''I'm better off on my own'' she says.
The court hears of a marriage marred by domestic abuse.
But Hesler is nobody's victim.
This quiet, unassuming woman targeted a boy from 1996-1998.
She groomed him with offers of as many Playstation games as he could want and pints of Budweiser, until he ''wanted to spend all his time with her''.
The boy began to bunk off school as the qualified social worker, almost twice his age, led him into a three year sexual relationship.
The victim and witness testimonies in court revealed who the real Sam Hesler is.
One by one, they talk about the foster carer, who 23 years ago, opened the doors of her three-bed Middlesbrough home to young people.
The court heard of a, ''party house'' littered with cans and crisps; but offered illicit alcohol and cigarettes.
It was no wonder that these kids congregated at Hesler's house after school.
Hesler and her husband Mark took them away at weekends to camp at car shows.
Hesler maintained company was good for the stream of foster children she took in.
A ''crisis carer'', she provided a home for children age 11-17 who, ''needed to be away from drugs or bad influences that they had come from''.
She says she was passionate about helping these children; that the £250 a week she received for temporarily looking after them, ''didn't go very far, after she had taken them out to buy them clothes, wash things, whatever they needed''.
She calmly told prosecutor Shaun Dodds that she didn't mind lots of young people hanging around her house.
They provided friendship to her foster children and were a, ''nice group''.
But the truth was far more contrived, and much more sordid.
Hesler knew how much the hours of computer games and illicit alcohol appealed to young teenagers.
As her marriage fell apart, and husband Mark frequently stayed away for work at Sheffield Hallam University, Hesler turned her attention to the boy, who ''was small for his age and looked at lot younger''.
She gave him a Playstation magazine and told him he could have any game he wanted.
She plied him with alcohol.
She joined him and his friends in the hot tub in her bikini.
Bizarrely, she asked him to sleep on a mattress on the floor of her bedroom when she shared her bed with her husband.
What started as a cuddle on the sofa, turned into touching and then a full adult relationship.
She introduced the boy, who was then 13 or 14, to sex and condoms.
The victim told the police that, ''he was in love'' with 26-year-old Sam.
Over the course of three years, they had sex in Hesler's bed; at her husband's parents house; in the woods where she walked her dog.
The victim said he had done very well at school before the relationship with Sam.
But by 1996, he stopped getting on the school bus and spent day after day at Hesler's.
There were hints during the trial that Hesler's husband suspected something was going on with the young boy.
''Why is he always here?''- one witness told of an explosive husband grabbing the victim by the collar during a camping weekend at the Essex car show, and shouting at the petrified boy, ''She's my wife!''.
Hesler claimed her husband was annoyed because the teenagers had brought cannabis with them on the trip; but witnesses say Mark lost his temper after Sam and her victim had gone missing for hours until they came out of a tent together.
The statements the witnesses gave tallied- from seeing the victim lying with his head on Hesler's lap; to endless sleepovers and the cannabis supplied by Hesler's brother.
As Shaun Dodds pointed out to the jury, why would the witnesses lie?
One witness hadn't seen the victim for 15 years, yet they shared exactly the same details in court, down to the layout of her husband's parent's garden - where they say Sam took them; where she abused her young victim when her house was full of young people and there was no privacy.
Hesler's victim had his childhood stolen from him.
He walked away from Hesler after seeing her kiss another boy in the hot tub.
In a cruel twist, Hesler told the young boy, ''I was pregnant with your child, but got rid of it''.
Twenty years later, during a conversation with his wife, after a few drinks, he was finally able to tell someone what Hesler had done to him.
His wife was wondering about becoming a social worker and the victim says he had an extreme reaction to that, and told her that he had been groomed by a social worker.
As the victim told the court, ''I was 13 or 14, when we first had sex. I shouldn't have known about it''.
Hesler's daughter came to court on the final day.
She divorced her husband some time ago.
Her brother, who witnesses remember visiting and bringing cannabis to the house in '97, has been convicted of murder and is in prison in Gibraltar.
Clinging onto her innocence, and showing not the slightest hint of remorse, Hesler's calm composure and polite manner gave nothing away during the week in court.
But the evidence against the former foster carer was overwhelming.
The jury returned their guilty verdict in under an hour.
Hesler, 50, of The Dorkins in Great Broughton, is due back in court to be sentenced on December 13.
Her victim, who has already served 25 years of pain, must be hoping that day brings him some relief.
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