A former Idaho schoolteacher, Jessica Lawson, has been sentenced to prison for having an inappropriate relationship with a minor who was adopted out of the foster system by a local family.
Lawson, 36, agreed to a plea deal for felony s*xual battery and felony r@pe of a minor.
The deal entailed dropping the previous charge of delivering a controlled substance and dispensing alcohol to a minor.
She was accused of giving the 16-year-old boy marijuana and alcohol. These charges were dropped in the plea deal.
Lawson taught at South Fremont High School from August 2021 through June 2023. She will face two to 20 years in prison and will have to register as a s*x offender, along with attending sex offender treatment. There will also be a no-contact order in place against the victim for 20 years.
Trouble started for Lawson when an officer from the Saint Anthony Police Department pulled her over on the morning of Nov. 6, 2023, because her vehicle had no visible tail-lights.
It was discovered that the teen boy was behind the wheel because Lawson who was too “drunk to drive”, according to authorities.
The teen admitted to having used marijuana given to him by Lawson. He was driven home by the officer.
The boy later told his parents that Lawson picked him up that night and described how they had smoked and drunk alcohol before having s*x.
Lawson later phoned the teen’s parents and admitted to having given him alcohol and picking him up, but denied that “anything else had occurred,” including the alleged sexual acts and substance use.
The teen’s parents, who had adopted him just days before he was assaulted, said that while their son may have had no real idea about what was happening, he will still be dealing with the fallout of Lawson’s violation for years to come.
“It takes a village to raise a young man, especially a young man that has been in and out of foster care, that has never known what it’s like to have a mom and a dad,” the father told the court, according to East Idaho News.
“My son is going to take a long time to heal and he doesn’t even know the wounds that he has yet. He’s not going to understand those wounds until he’s a parent and he’s sending his daughter or son…to the house of a parent that he trusts.”
The teen’s mother also attested that he struggles to differentiate between safe and unsafe situations as a result of his time in the foster care system.
“We brought [my son] in because he needed somebody, and he didn’t have anybody…It was pretty quick that we realized this is a really great kid, and he’s wonderful and he should be in our family,” the mother told the court.
“He’s got a lot of problems because he didn’t have a mom and dad that taught him how to recognize safe people. And you took advantage of that…she knew she could get something from him.”
The victim’s parents believe that Lawson would’ve gotten a harsher sentence if she were a male perpetrator or if their son were a girl, but Senior District Judge Stephen Dunn, who was in charge of sentencing, denied this.
