Teacher goes to jail for sleeping with student

updated 10:09 a.m. ET Aug. 12, 2005

MCMINNVILLE, Tenn. - A former elementary school teacher pleaded no contest to having sex with one of her students, a 13-year-old boy, and has been sentenced to nine months in jail.

Pamela Rogers Turner, 28, entered the plea Thursday, allowing her to avoid a trial on 28 charges of sexual battery and statutory rape.

Turner, who had taught physical education and coached girls basketball for two years at Centertown Elementary, had trouble speaking as she tried to enter her plea to four counts of sexual battery stemming from encounters at the school.

She was accused of having sex with the boy at his home and at the school, which runs from kindergarten through eighth grade, between November and January.

“I can’t even talk,” she told Circuit Court Judge Bart Stanley.

Supervised probation
After Turner is released from jail, she will be on supervised probation for the rest of an eight-year suspended sentence. The judge also ordered her to surrender her teaching certificate and said she would be registered as a child sex offender. The sentence prohibits her from profiting from the case and does not allow interviews.

District Attorney Dale Potter has said Turner lived at the boy’s house “for a brief period of time when she was moving from residence to residence.”

The mother of the teenager in the case previously described Turner as a family friend and said she hoped there would not be a trial. Potter said Thursday that was part of the reason for the plea agreement.

Turner was a college homecoming queen and basketball player who once appeared as a bikini-clad promoter for a professional wrestling match. Her husband, Chris Turner, filed for divorce in January, at the same time she was indicted.

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