Pamela Joan Rogers (born July 1, 1977) is an American former
elementary school
A primary school (in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Australia, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and South Africa), junior school (in Australia), elementary school or grade school (in North America and the Philippines) is a school for primary ed ...
coach
Coach may refer to:
Guidance/instruction
* Coach (sport), a director of athletes' training and activities
* Coaching, the practice of guiding an individual through a process
** Acting coach, a teacher who trains performers
Transportation
* Co ...
who taught in
McMinnville, Tennessee
McMinnville is the largest city in and the county seat of Warren County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 13,605 at the 2010 census. It was named for Governor Joseph McMinn.
Geography
McMinnville is located at (35.686708, -85.779309) ...
. She was convicted of four counts of sexual battery in 2005 and two counts of solicitation of sexual exploitation of a minor in 2006 stemming from a three-month relationship with a 13-year-old boy who was her student at Centertown Elementary School. Her case made headlines and was covered by major news networks for being a notorious teacher who had an unlawful sexual relationship with one of her students. After getting released in 2012, she was taken into custody in 2015 for allegedly conspiring to smuggle contraband cell phones into a state prison; her case brought headlines and national attention to the problem of cellphone smuggling into prison. Local news sources reported she was still in custody as of July 2017.
Personal life
Born on July 1, 1977, Rogers attended
Tennessee Technological University
Tennessee Technological University, commonly referred to as Tennessee Tech, is a public research university in Cookeville, Tennessee, United States. It was formerly known as Tennessee Polytechnic Institute, and before that as University of Dixie ...
and Cumberland University, playing basketball for both. She married high school basketball coach Christopher Turner in 2003. They separated in 2004 due to marital difficulties and he filed for divorce in January 2005.
Criminal prosecution
On February 4, 2005, Rogers was charged with 15 counts of sexual battery by an authority figure and 13 counts of statutory rape stemming from a three-month relationship with a teenage boy who was her student. On August 12, 2005, Rogers pleaded no contest to four charges of
sexual battery
Battery is a criminal Offence (law), offense involving unlawful physical contact, distinct from assault which is the act of creating apprehension of such contact.
Battery is a specific common law offense, although the term is used more general ...
by an authority figure as part of a deal with the prosecution. She was given an eight year
suspended sentence
A suspended sentence is a sentence on conviction for a criminal offence, the serving of which the court orders to be deferred in order to allow the defendant to perform a period of probation. If the defendant does not break the law during that ...
, during which she was to serve 270 days in the Warren County jail in Tennessee followed by seven years and three months of probation. She was also ordered to surrender her teaching certificate and register as a sex offender for life because sexual battery by an authority figure is a "violent sexual offense" under the law of the state of Tennessee. The sentence prohibited her from profiting from the case through books and movies as well as barring her from granting interviews for eight years.
Rogers was arrested again on April 24, 2006, on charges that she had sent text messages, nude photos, and sex videos of herself to the same boy while using her father's cellphone. She was also charged for communicating with the boy via blogs and a website. The judge ordered Rogers to remain in jail until her next court hearing. On July 14, 2006, she was sentenced to seven years in prison for violating her probation by sending explicit videos to her former victim and maintaining contact with him via online blogs. Rogers asked for mercy and apologized to her family and the teen's family, saying tearfully to the judge, "I have humiliated myself. What I did was wrong, I am willing to do anything to rehabilitate myself." She asked for local incarceration with therapy. Circuit Judge Bart Stanley denied her request saying, "You have done everything except show this court that you wanted to rehabilitate yourself." He revoked Rogers' probation and ordered her to serve the rest of a seven-year prison sentence at the
Tennessee Prison for Women
The Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center, formerly the Tennessee Prison for Women, is a Tennessee Department of Correction prison for women located in Nashville, Tennessee.
On May 28, 2015, Rogers was indicted by a grand jury for introduction of contraband into a state penal facility and arrested, having allegedly conspired with two others to smuggle cell phones into the state prison where she had previously been incarcerated. In 2016, Rogers was featured in the Headline News segment ''Twisted: Teachers Who Prey.'' Local news sources reported she was still in custody as of July 2017.
Jennifer Fichter
Jennifer Christine Fichter (born December 8, 1984) is an American former teacher who was convicted in Polk County, Florida, United States, in 2015 of sexual battery against three 17-year-old male students. She was sentenced to 22 years imprisonme ...