Teacher Who Had Sex With Student Gets Charges Dropped - By MARRYING Him!

A former teacher at a small-town high school in Missouri appears to be off the hook, at least legally speaking, after MARRYING the former student she was accused of having sex with while on the job!

Back in February 2019, Baylee A. Turner, who was 23 years old at the time, was arrested and accused of having sex with one of her male students at Sarcoxie High School in the town of Sarcoxie, which is in the southwestern part of the state.

According to the Joplin Globe, the Jasper County Sheriff’s Department looked into the disturbing allegations and charged Turner with having sexual contact with a student. Per court documents, both Turner and the unnamed student eventually acknowledged to investigators that they had sex during the week of January 14-21, 2019 at Turner’s home in Sarcoxie.

Turner had been a first-year English teacher at the high school at the time after working at the nearby middle school for two years. In that 2019 school year, she had been assigned to teach English to sophomores and seniors. However, after she was arrested and charged in the case, she quickly resigned from her position.

Over the next couple years, prosecutors prepared their case against Turner. As with everything over this period, various court dates were delayed and postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Amid those ensuing delays, Turner did something that appears to have gotten her out from under the focus of investigators: she married the student.

WTF?!?!

This week, prosecutors in Jasper County confirmed to the newspaper that they have now officially dropped their charges against Turner after she “married the student she was accused of having sex with.” Per the report, it is unclear when the couple got married.

Nate Dally, the assistant prosecutor in charge of the case, told the outlet that “marital or spousal privilege” now applies to the situation, and legally, the unnamed young man cannot be compelled to testify against his now-wife. Thus, with the state’s case against Turner “exceedingly difficult to prove in court,” prosecutors have decided to walk away from the charges altogether.

The probable cause affidavit in this case did not indicate the unnamed young man’s age, either at the time of the initial incident or now. However, Missouri state law wisely prohibits any sexual contact between students and school district employees, even if the student is of age for consensual sex. Knowing that, the Sarcoxie School Board has since voted to petition the state of Missouri to have the now-26-year-old woman’s teaching license revoked.

So that’s something, we suppose. And prosecutors in the case did acknowledge to the outlet that having Turner surrender her state teaching license was “a primary concern” even before their decision not to prosecute in court. But still, Turner had been facing up to as much as four years in prison prior to the case being dropped, and now… nothing.

Here is more on Turner’s initial arrest and the charges against her (below):