A 61-year-old teacher has admitted repeatedly having sex with a 15-year-old student who was also allegedly abused by another educator at the same Georgia Christian school.
Sherri Delle Mauldin was sentenced Monday to 12 years in prison and 25 years of probation for the scandal that led to the Nathanael Greene Academy in Siloam being closed, the Union-Recorder reported.
The teacher had argued that she deserved to escape prison, blaming the child molestation on her going through a “dark place.”
However, prosecutors wanted her to have an even heavier sentence — pushing for 18 years’ prison — because of the disturbing nature of a “60-year-old adult” abusing a “15-year-old child.”
“I would be lying to you if I didn’t tell you that I was slightly disappointed by the court’s sentence — only because there were so many aggravating circumstances,” prosecutor T. Wright Barksdale told the Union-Recorder after sentencing.
“Age gap is something that was an aggravated circumstance, and the fact that it was a teacher and a student — that was an aggravating circumstance. The fact that this was a criminal act that took place over the course of a month … was an aggravating circumstance.
“And the fact that these criminal acts occurred in multiple locations involving multiple sexual acts — those were all aggravating circumstances,” he said, without elaborating on the exact locations.
However, the teacher was given credit for eventually “being forthright after initially lying to law enforcement,” the prosecutor said of Mauldin’s blind plea, meaning one without a deal.
Mauldin was busted after another teacher at the school, Bonnie Elizabeth Brown, 26, was nabbed for alleged sexual contact with the same boy. She has asked for a jury trial, which is due to start next month.
The scandal of both teachers being busted led to school officials shutting down the Christian school, which had opened in 1959.
The boy had accused the school of failing to protect him.
“These women took advantage of their positions as my teachers,” he previously told 11 Alive in a statement released through attorney Ashley Mitchell.
“My school did not protect me as a child,” he said, in what his attorney called a “classic case of predators having access to children and not much oversight.”
