Female School Teacher Jailed For Two Years For Sexual Contact With Students
A teacher from Pennsylvania has been jailed for having sexual relations with two students, aged 17 and 18, and flashing her breasts to a third student to whom she taught English.
The 32-year-old teacher, Lauren Harrington-Cooper allegedly enticed the students into sexual affairs by telling them, “All the candy you need is right here.”
She admitted to having sexual intercourse with one student in her car with whom she also performed oral sex and sleeping with the younger student while a teacher at the Wyoming Valley West School district in Pennsylvania.
Harrington-Cooper was sentenced to nine to 23 months in jail, according to the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader newspaper, and Assistant District Attorney Jenny Roberts said the victims had moved on with their lives.
According to Roberts, ‘The defendant was in a position of authority with these students and she took advantage of that. They’re just happy to move on with their lives.”
The teacher was first arrested in December of last year on allegations that she slept with the 18-year-old student, and then in January, she was charged with sending explicit text messages to the 17-year-old.
She was also charged with two counts of corruption of minors for having what prosecutors said was “sexually explicit conversations” with two other boys, aged 16 and 17.
Even though school officials confirmed that no sexual contact actually took place on school grounds, police said she did make the “all the candy you want” comment while in school.
Harrington-Cooper’s attorney, Joe D’Andrea, told reporters that his client had accepted responsibility, had apologized to the victims and had promised that she would use her time in jail to reflect on her actions.
According to D’Andrea, his client suffers from “Self-image issues of acceptance and love. She has been diagnosed with some significant psychological issues of inadequacy. You would think that she’s a pretty, young girl, that she would feel good about herself. But her self-esteem issues have really troubled her all of her life, and she found comfort and solace in some people giving her attention, as wrong as it was,” he said.