The wife of a high school principal is facing up to two years in jail for having a three-year affair with an underage student.
JoAnn Stephens, from Texas, pleaded guilty to a single charge of improper conduct after a plea deal with prosecutors.
Four other charges against her were dropped.
The 43-year-old had an affair with a 15-year-old student at her husband’s school where she was working as a substitute teacher.
Stephens was an elementary physical education teacher and girls’ athletics coach at Mineola ISD. Before she resigned in December, she had been an employee with the school district since 2006.
The alleged relationship with the male student started when he was 15. He graduated in 2010, according to the probable cause affidavit.
The affair lasted three years and only ended after the pair were caught leaving a secluded spot where they had sex.
Mineola Police Department received a complaint from Child Protective Services in August regarding a ‘reported inappropriate relationship’ between a school employee and a student.
After several months of investigations, officers found probable cause existed to charge Stephens with the offence of ‘improper relationship between educator and student’, according to police information.
Investigators found DNA evidence from both the teacher and the boy inside a pick-up truck that linked the two together.
They also reportedly confiscated text messages and other cell phone records that linked the pair and proved the three-year relationship.
According to the arrest affidavit, Stephens also gave the teen a prepaid cell phone, and witnesses said she allegedly gave him candy, gifts, clothes and money.
The affair began when Stephens, a PE teacher, was employed as a substitute teacher at Mineola High School in Mineola, Texas.
Her husband Ricky Stephens was principal of the school.
Stephens was originally charged with five second-degree felonies: two counts of sexual assault of a child, two counts of inappropriate relationship of educator and student and one count of online solicitation.
But under a plea deal only the improper relationship charge was brought against Stephens in return for a guilty plea.
The charge carries a sentence of between two and 20 years.
Stephens’s lawyer Dan Wyde said she is ready to face her fate: ‘Mrs Stephens has been very calm throughout this process. She understand the seriousness and the nature of the allegations.’
