Ex-school nurse admits to having sex with student, offering him $2K in hush money
A former elementary school nurse in Missouri admitted to having sex with an underage student multiple times — and offering him $2,000 in hush money, according to a report.
Tina Maria Sumner pleaded guilty on Friday to two counts of statutory rape and one count of victim tampering in a plea deal that will send her into a 120-day in-custody sex offender assessment program, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
The 47-year-old nurse resigned from Fox Elementary School in Arnold following her 2017 arrest.
A judge will eventually decide whether Sumner — who was named as the top school nurse by the Jefferson County Association of School Nurses in 2005 — will be kept in custody for a seven-year prison term or be released. She will also serve a five-year probation term for pleading guilty to victim tampering in the case, the newspaper reports.
The teen told authorities in August 2017 that he had sex with Sumner at her home in Jefferson County, at his home in Arnold and at a Fox School District building on eight occasions since 2015, court records show.
Sumner refused to talk to investigators upon her arrest and she was released without being charged. But the teen’s mother contacted a detective in Arnold three months later to report that Sumner had sent her son a $2,000 check to pay off a loan on his car if he agreed to stop cooperating in the case.
The teen’s mother later gave a copy of the check to investigators and cellphone records showed that Sumner and the boy spoke by cellphone in late 2017, court documents show.
Sumner worked for the Fox C-6 School District from 1999 through 2017. She resigned from her role at Fox Elementary School at the end of the year, the Jefferson County Leader reports. She earned $44,604 in salary that year, the Post-Dispatch reported.
She had faced up to 17 years in prison, if convicted at trial.
Photo Credit: Jefferson County Police Department