Sam Amico
A former award-winning teacher in Arkansas has been sentenced to jail for an alleged sexual assault of a student more than a decade ago.
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Leah Queen, 44, pleaded guilty to having a sexual relationship with a student and was sentenced to six years of state-supervised probation, as well as 58 days in the Benton County Jail. Along with that, she was ordered to have no contact with the victim.
Queen was a teacher at the Gentry Intermediate School in Gentry, Arkansas, a town of about 4,000 in the Ozark Mountains. She reportedly had an inappropriate relationship with the student in the summer of 2010.
According to affidavit obtained by KNWA, Queen began socializing with the student outside of school hours when the student was 17-years old. That is when Queen “befriended (the victim) after a basketball game and the two began socializing outside of school hours,” the outlet reported.
The affidavit also states that Queen and the student once kissed at a summer camp — with the sexual assault incidents occurring in Queen’s office and the officer bathroom at the school. Queen, now 44, was 31 at the time.
Along with that, Queen’s husband also caught her in the act with the student in their bed, per the Daily Mail.
Queen was named Gentry Intermediate “Teacher of the Month” at her school in 2019 and “Teacher of the Year” in 2022.
“Queen had undergone a huge transformation in recent years as she embraced her role as a PE teacher shedding hundreds of pounds in weight dropping from 300lbs to 165lbs over the course of decade,” the Daily Mail noted.
Queen was nominated for her “Teacher of the Year” award by one her students.
‘When i was a girl in the second grade, I had a teacher who did not make feel like I was very much. I just wanted to love my babies. I have a passion and drive for this and they love me back,’ Queen told KNWA-TV while accepting her award, via the Daily Mail.
