JACKSON, Mich. -- A former Michigan teacher who admitted to having a sexual relationship with one of her students has been sentenced to prison.
Jamee Hiatt of Grass Lake told a Jackson County Circuit Court judge on Thursday that her actions “were inexcusable” and she “became out of control.”
The 32-year-old Hiatt earlier pleaded guilty to one count each of first-degree and third-degree criminal sexual conduct. Hiatt told the court that she began a sexual relationship with a student in 2014, when he was 13.
The victim told police that Hiatt had sex with him “so many times that he couldn’t begin to tell how many times that there were,” Jackson Police Det. Gary Schuette testified, reports CBS Detroit. The boy recounted five or six specific incidents, Schuette said, which took place at Hiatt’s home in Grass Lake and on one occasion in a parking lot of a store in Jackson.
The Jackson Citizen Patriot reports Judge Thomas Wilson ordered her to spend 3 to 20 years in prison, followed by a lifetime of monitoring as a sex offender. She was arrested by Jackson police in January 2016 after resigning from her job as third-grade teacher at Woodworth Elementary School in Leslie, Mich., the station reports. Prior to that, she taught at Leslie Middle School as recently as 2013, according to the district’s website.
Last year, authorities also said she gave the student a gun that was believed to have been used in a Jackson shooting.
Defense lawyer Phillip Berkemeier said Hiatt has done “a lot of things she regrets.” Berkemeier said Hiatt had been “forthcoming” about the gun.
