The 30-year-old teacher, Jennifer Fichter, was sentenced to 22 years of imprisonment for having sexual intercourse with three of her minor students.
Jennifer Fichter is a former English teacher at a school from Lakeland, Florida. According to her, she had sexual relations with these students at least 37 times.
After the sentence was issued on Thursday, July 2nd, she gave a very emotional speech, while tears were rolling down her cheeks as she spoke of her unlawful deeds:
“I wish I could go back and remove what I have done. I hate what I have done. I wish I could go back and think about (the victims) before me,” she said before the judge.
The maximum penalty in these cases was 15 years for each count. In April, 2014, when she was first arrested, she got a plea deal from the State Attorney’s Office which she refused, hoping to obtain a better sentence.
However, that did not happen at Polk County Court on Thursday, in spite of her tears and in spite of the fact that her father also begged the court for a more merciful sentence. The judge told the woman that she will have time to think about her deeds and come out a different person.
The victims’ families were pleased with the verdict. One of the mothers said that it was incredibly painful to her to lose her son before her eyes and to know that this woman was responsible for all that.
Fichter had asked the students to lie to their parents and used aliases when she texted them. She also became pregnant with one of them, but she terminated the pregnancy.
She was first arrested in April, after admitting to having sex with one of her minor students in her car more than a dozen times. After the investigation started, it was revealed that there was another student whom she had seduced in the same manner.
The inappropriate relationships started soon after she was hired at the school. She had previously been a teacher in another school from Orange County, where it was reported that she had inappropriate relations with one of her 8th Grade students.
She resigned her job at that school and got a job with Central Florida Aerospace Academy in 2011. According to her statements, she also had an affair with a student while working there.
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