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A pregnant special needs teacher and soccer coach will be cooling her heels behind bars after she was convicted of a same-sex affair with one of her students.
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Emily Lehneis, 30, had been initially charged with solicitation to the production of child pornography, unlawful contact with a minor, obscenity, institutional sexual assault, and corruption of minors.
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As part of a plea deal inked in September, Lehneis copped to one felony count of school – intercourse/sexual contact with student and one misdemeanour count of corruption of minors. The other charges were dismissed.
“She manipulated me and had total control. She used her marriage, family and career to keep me from saying anything,” the victim said in an impact statement read aloud by York County Chief Deputy District Attorney Taylor Katherman, the York Dispatch reported.
“I’m trying to get by each day with breathing techniques and trying not to cry.”
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Lehneis was contrite about her antics.
She told the victim: “I want … her family to know how sorry I am for what I did. I have no excuse for what I did, and I cannot understand how I let myself do what I did.”
The former soccer coach resigned last January and she was arrested in May.
According to reports, Lehneis met the unnamed girl in 2022. At the time, the teenager was a soccer player who was 16 or 17 years old. That September, the relationship began developing, followed by kissing in the classroom, sexually explicit messages between teacher and student, and raunchy photos.
Lehneis also volunteered to tutor the girl in soccer.
The criminal complaint obtained by Fox News said Lehneis once put her name tag in the area of the girl’s private parts in a “flirtatious way.”
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“(S)he never thought her first kiss would be from a teacher,” the complaint said, adding that the teacher asked the teen to be her “secret girlfriend.”
After two months, the teen torpedoed the relationship, telling the teacher it was wrong.
Lehneis’ lawyer asked for leniency in light of his client’s pregnancy. Her baby is due in March.
However, the judge rejected the pregnancy gambit.
Lehneis was also sentenced to five years of probation and will have to register as a Tier II sex offender.
Meanwhile, a former Georgia cheerleading coach has been charged with two counts of sexual assault involving one of her students.
Cops say Audrianna Williams had been employed at Monroe Comprehensive High School until mid-December when she resigned. The warrant said Williams was “engaging in sexually explicit conduct with another person whom she knows is a student enrolled at the school of which she is an employee.”
She had been under investigation by the school board at the time of her resignation.
Williams had a fleeting brush with internet fame in August 2020 when she and another teacher shared a video celebrating the return of school after the COVID-19 shutdown.
“To get messages from the students saying, ‘I’m sorry, Mrs. Williams, I won’t be able to do my work because I have COVID’ or ‘I’m sorry my dad passed away.’ So it was kind of like, wow,” Williams said.
@HunterTOSun
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