Lyndsey Sherrod Bates, 23, was sentenced to probation after she pleaded guilty to having sex with a student under 19-years of age.
The former Alabama school teacher was sentenced on Tuesday to time served, plus three years of probation.
Bates, who was married, will be required to register as a sex offender as part of her plea agreement with prosecutors.
“She’s going to be a sex offender and felon,” Madison County Assistant District Attorney Tim Douthit said. “But we’re not sending people to jail for consensual sex without any evidence of coercion.”
Douthit also acknowledged that Bates taught special education at Madison County High School before resigning last year, was charged with having sex with a student and engaging in a sex act with a student younger than 19, plus three misdemeanor counts of distributing obscene material to a student.
Madison County prosecutors said both students were over 16, the age of consent in Alabama.
Bates is the daughter-in-law of Stacy Bates. Stacy Bates is the chief deputy of the Madison County sheriff’s office, which investigated the case.
“The Sheriff’s Office started an investigation as soon as the allegations were brought to our attention, and Chief Bates was never involved in that investigation,” said Madison County Sheriff Kevin Turner in a statement.
Lyndsey Bates’ relationship to Stacy Bates “in no way has affected the investigative process or urgency leading to today’s arrest, nor to the future criminal justice proceedings,” according to a statement from Lt. Donny Shaw, a sheriff’s office spokesman. “Because the victim(s) in these charges are juveniles no specific details of the investigation are being released at this time.”
According to “AL.com,” the two victims were not students in Bates’ class, and the 10-year prison sentence she received was suspended, however, Bates’ husband filed for divorce shortly after she was arrested in April of last year.
In another incident involving an educator having an illicit sexual relationship with students, a former athletic teacher invited 4 High school football players to her home for “group sex” and then lied about the encounter when the tryst was discovered, claiming that she was drugged and repeatedly raped by the students.
Brianna Walker, 25, was an athletic trainer at Spruce Creek High School in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, at the time of the sexual encounter.
According to an initial police report the 4-football/high school students aged 17 and 18 were invited to Walker’s home on May 30th to engage in group sex.
However, days after filing the report with the New Smyrna Beach Police Department, Walker 23, suddenly claimed she was drugged and gang-raped by all 4 football players.
The revised police report indicated that Walker was “fuzzy” regarding the details of the alleged rape. She told investigators she did not consent to have sex with all 4 players; however, she may have consented to having sex with one.
Police became immediately suspicious regarding her claim after her toxicology report was negative for date-rape drugs, upon further investigation; police discovered that Walker had a reputation for inappropriate behavior toward her students.
After police confronted Walker with the evidence that there were no drugs in her system, she admitted she had two alcoholic drinks before the players arrived at her home and another one while they were there. She also admitted to allowing “juveniles to partake in alcoholic consumption provided by her.”
After concluding their investigation police charged Walker with filing a false police report and offering alcohol to minors.
Walker has pleaded not guilty to the charges, her attorney told The Daytona Beach News Journal, there was “no criminal wrongdoing.”
Both these women were very naive to think these HS boys were not going brag to their buds that they screwed a teacher. How dumb can they get.