A
high school teacher was convicted Thursday of having sex with five
students, some of them football players, after a judge rejected an
insanity defense that argued the teens took advantage of her.
Stacy
Schuler was sentenced to a total of four years in prison for the
encounters with the Mason High School students at her home in Springboro
in southwest Ohio in 2010. She can ask a judge to free her from prison
after six months.
The 33-year-old Schuler, who could have faced decades in prison, cried as she was handcuffed and led out of the courtroom.
The
five teens testified that Schuler, a health and gym teacher, had been
drinking alcohol at the time of the encounters and was a willing
participant who initiated much of the contact. The teens were about 17
at the time. The age of consent in Ohio is 16, but it's illegal for a
teacher to have sex with a student.
"This
is a noble profession that you have, and I've heard a lot of good
things about you, but I know that you had the opportunity, as all
teachers do, to affect the lives of our children," Warren County Common
Pleas Judge Robert Peeler said. "You crossed a line."
Schuler's lawyers argued that she had medical and psychological issues and couldn't remember the encounters.
Before
sentencing Schuler on 16 counts of sexual battery and three counts of
providing alcohol to a minor, the judge said it would be a "magnificent
leap" to believe she didn't know her actions were wrong.
Schuler
didn't testify during the four-day nonjury trial, and she and her
attorneys declined to address the judge before he sentenced her.
But parents of two of the teen victims made tearful statements.
A
father spoke of his son's depression and lost motivation and said the
teen almost didn't go to college. He asked the judge to hand down a
sentence to send a message that Schuler's acts are not acceptable and
there are serious consequences.
"It
impacts the teaching community as a whole, how a single teacher who
made the wrong decision multiple times overshadows 99.9 percent of the
teachers that truly do care, not pretend to care, about their students,"
he said.
A
mother said her son turned to and trusted Schuler during an extremely
low period when his father had cancer and related health problems.
"These young men may appear as if they are tough guys, but in reality, they are truly hurting," she said.
"She took advantage of their vulnerability. She crossed the line and it is unacceptable."
Assistant
prosecutor Teresa Hiett further pointed out to the judge how the teens
have been affected, noting that Mason High School was shut down for the
week of the trial because "everyone's been trying to figure out who
these five boys were."
Testimony
from a defense psychologist had suggested that Schuler's medical and
physical ailments, combined with her vegan diet and use of alcohol and
an antidepressant, helped impair her ability to tell right from wrong.
A
psychologist for the prosecution rebutted that testimony, saying that
the use of alcohol does not meet the state standard for an insanity
defense and that willingly getting drunk is not a legal defense for a
crime.
Two
former Mason students had testified that Schuler had devised a plan to
enter an insanity plea before she was ever charged. Other students
testified on Schuler's behalf, hugging her in the courtroom and telling
the judge she was a supportive advocate who kept appropriate boundaries.
Schuler
had been a teacher and athletic trainer at the school north of
Cincinnati since 2000 before resigning in February after an anonymous
tip to the school led to the charges against her...
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