Arkansas teacher of the year admits sex with student after previous not guilty plea
Christopher Koulouris July 16, 2023
Leah Queen, former Gentry, Arkansas teacher of the year admits having sex with teen student after previously pleading not guilty to 2010 illicit relationship.
A former Arkansas teacher of the year has been jailed after she admitted to having a sexual relationship with a student.
Leah Queen, 44, pleaded guilty earlier this week to sexual assault having previously pled not guilty the Arkansas Democrat Gazette reported. The guilty plea comes nine months after the educator being arrested and charged with sexual assault.
Queen, who hails from Oklahoma, was a physical education teacher at Gentry Intermediate School in Gentry, near Fayetteville. The charges led to the PE teacher being suspended while authorities investigated claims against her.
Highly awarded and respected teacher
The assault occurred in 2010 when the high school student was 17 and Queen was 31, but because Arkansas has no statute of limitations for sexual assault involving a minor, Queen can still face charges for her actions from 13 years ago.
Although the age of consent in Arkansas is 16, teachers are only allowed to have sexual relationships with students once they are 18-years-old.
The former student described sexual contact starting in the summer of 2010.
Court documents stated Queen — a highly awarded teacher — and the victim ‘engaging in deviant sexual activity’ before the minor’s senior year of high school.
She had been on a camping trip when she kissed the victim. A journal from the student also detailed various other instances of intimacy between the pair.
Queen had sex with the student in her office, her office bathroom at the school and even at home according to court documents.
Parents of the student, Queen’s ex-husband and another former school teacher all corroborated several details of the student’s accusations.
Ordered to register as sex offender
An affidavit told hows Queen befriended the victim after a basketball game, with the pair soon socializing outside of school hours.
Queen’s ex also reported seeing the victim sharing a bed with his ex-wife on several occasions.
Benton County Circuit Judge Brad Karren placed the female educator on six years of state-supervised probation and sentenced her to 5800 58 days in Benton County Jail.
She has also been ordered not to have any contact with the victim.
It remained unclear what the educator’s terms would have been had the genders been reversed as some pondered on social media.
Queen, who had been teaching grades 3-5 at the time of her arrest had been a teacher in the Gentry School District for more than 20 years, and had initially pleaded not guilty but later changed her plea.
She also agreed to never be employed as a teacher again as part of the plea agreement.
Leah Queen, former Gentry Arkansas teacher sentenced having sex with teen student
Huge fall from grace’
Queen is required to register as a sex offender and must complete a sex offender treatment program.
Queen had undergone a huge transformation in recent years as she embraced her role as a PE teacher shedding hundreds of pounds in weight dropping from 300lbs to 165lbs over the course of decade.
It is a huge fall from grace for the former teacher who in 2022 was made ‘Teacher of the Year’ at her school and who in 2019 was given a Golden Apple Award having been nominated by one of her young students to local television station KNWA.
‘When i was a girl in the second grade, I had a teacher who did not make feel like I was very much. I just wanted to love my babies. I have a passion and drive for this and they love me back,’ Queen told the station while accepting her award.
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