Female Teacher, 25, Had Sex With Student, 17, Multiple Times After Becoming Facebook Friends

Rachel Farrell, 25, is alleged to have carried out an extended affair with an 11th grade pupil she was teaching reading to at Bangor Area High School in Pennsylvania.


She has since resigned and has now been charged with three counts of corrupting a minor.

The case is the latest to concern a female teacher who has been jailed for, or accused of, having sex with a student.

Police believe Farrell also had sexual relationships with up to three other 17-year-old students, Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli said yesterday.

She faces further charges should these teenagers decide to testify against her.

Mr Morganelli said: ‘This particular case was the case we could bring. This may be it.

‘It may be that we just don’t bring other cases for reasons of lack of cooperation from the alleged victims.

‘Farrell forfeited her career. [Sleeping with an underage student] is just not right, it’s wrong and it constitutes a crime under our crimes code.’

Farrell taught at Bangor Area High School under her maiden name, Rachel Warner, but has been on administrative leave since December when the allegations first emerged.

Mr Morganelli said she admitted to both police and her employers that she had slept with two 17-year-old students.

She married in June 2010 and is accused of conducting an affair with the student between August of that year and January 2011.

Police said the teenager, now 18, admitted having sex with Farrell at ‘numerous times at many different locations’ such as secluded parking spots.

Their relationship is said to have begun after the pair began talking on Facebook and through text messages.

Bangor Area High School superintendent Patricia Mulroy said the district confronted Farrell as soon it found out about the accusations against her and that the matter was turned over to county prosecutors.

Farrell, of Palmer Township, is free on $5,000 bail. She has cooperated with police, but the investigation is ongoing, Mr Morganelli said.

The age of consent in Pennsylvania is 18 for the corruption of minors.

Bangor Area High School is no stranger to controversy. A biology teacher fatally overdosed on heroin in 2009, while a male teacher’s aide was jailed after admitting drug possession charges and of supplying drugs to students, one of whom went on to kill himself.

In 2010, a nude photo of a female teacher’s aide was circulated on students’ mobile phones.

Female teachers having sex with their students has dominated the headlines in recent weeks.

Just yesterday, a mother-of-two was found guilty of having sex with a 15-year-old boy she taught tap dancing. Kimberly Sauto, 34, from North Ridgeville, Ohio, had denied having sex with the teenager in the back of her car in August 2011.

On Monday, it emerged that a high school teacher has been accused of having ‘intimate sexual relationships’ with two of her students, kissing a third on the lips and exchanging inappropriate texts and emails with a third. Joanne Léger-Legault, from Ottawa, Canada, was stripped of her teaching permit and fired by the city’s public school board over the allegations.

During last week alone, a Reno teacher who had sex with a student and oral sex with six others was jailed; a teacher in New York was sacked after she allegedly performed sexual acts with two pupils and gave them drugs and alcohol; Lousiana teacher was charged with having sex with one of her former pupils and sending him sexually explicit text messages; and an Arizona band teacher was sentenced to 15 years in prison for having a sexual relationship with a 13-year-old student.