Photo: Woodys Photos / Shutterstock / Jasper County Sheriff's Office
The victim is no longer obligated to testify against her.
By Amanda Hartmann — Written on Feb 02, 2022
A former Missouri high school teacher avoided all the charged with having sexual contact with a student will no longer face trial after marrying the student in question.
Baylee A. Turner, a 26-year-old woman who previously taught at Sarcoxie High School in Jasper County Missouri, had charges brought against her in February of 2019, in her first year of teaching there.
In the two years before, she had taught at the school district’s middle school.
Turner had sexual intercourse with one of her male students at some point between Jan. 14 and Jan. 21.
The Missouri teacher's charges were dropped after marrying her alleged victim.
When the unidentified male student married Turner, marital privilege became applied to the case. Since someone cannot be required to testify against their spouse in court, Turner's case now lack evidence.
This complicated the case against the teacher and made much more difficult to gain the proof required for a conviction.
This information is all confirmed by an assistant prosecutor on the case, Nate Dally, as reported by a local news source, The Jopling Globe.
It was because of these complications that their team decided to dismiss the case, believing that it would be too difficult to prove her guilt in court without the testimony of her former student, now husband.
The exact nature of Turner's charges have not been disclosed.
In Missouri, state law prohibits any sexual contact with a student by anyone from the school district. This includes employees, volunteers, officials, regardless of whether the person was appointed or elected to their position.
The final element of this law that make some of the details unclear is that this sexual contact is criminalized regardless of the student's age, whether they are of the age of consent or whether they are a minor.
The case against Turner in particular did not include the age of the anonymous male student, so it is not confirmed whether or not he was of the age of consent at the time of the alleged offense.
Regardless of these details, their marriage still allowed her to avoid some serious repercussions, but with the age of the student remaining unknown, it is unclear to the public how egregious the reported offense might have been.
Turner will not be a teacher again.
However, the assistant prosecutor Dally confirmed that Turner had surrendered her state teaching license.
It is not necessarily the equivalent to the punishment she may have been sentenced to if she had been convicted for the charges of sexual contact with the high school student.
However, Dally said that removing her teaching license was one of the prosecutor’s office’s highest priorities in pursuing this case.
Undoubtedly, her willfully surrendering it was probably yet another reason they decided not to press charges, since they saw at least some of the results they were looking for.
It doesn’t feel like enough, but it seems like the case is at an impasse.
And yet, if the charges are true, should more have been done to keep this former teacher away from other children?
With no convictions against her, she theoretically stands no worse off on paper than someone who had simply never pursued a teaching license.
Should the prosecutors have kept working to push the case through and find proof elsewhere?
Or perhaps they were correct, and the case was doomed to be thrown out once they lost the right to compel the former student to testify against Turner.
Amanda Hartmann is a writer and editorial intern at YourTango who writes on various topics such as news and entertainment.