A Missouri high school teacher has admitted to committing criminal sex acts with a 16-year-old student while other teens acted as “lookouts,” a guilty plea that could get her a four-year prison sentence, according to the Daily Mail.
Hailey Clifton-Carmack, 26, was a math teacher at Laquey High School when she was arrested in January after another student reported her inappropriate relationship with the victim to police, providing a photo of scratches she supposedly left on the boy’s back while having sex in the witness’s driveway.
The teacher pleaded guilty to sexual contact with a student on Friday in a deal that allowed her to avoid other chargers, including statutory rape, child molestation, and child endangerment, the outlet reported.
The victim’s father, Mark Creighton, is also facing felony charges for allegedly knowing about the relationship and condoning it. His case will proceed after Clifton-Carmack is sentenced on October 11, Pulaski County prosecutor Kevin S. Hillman said.
Creighton “knew of the relationship of his minor child and the 26-year-old teacher, and instead of reporting the information, he continued to cover for them and allowed the relationship to continue” and “even allowed Hailey to come over to his residence and see the victim while he was present,” prosecutors said in documents obtained by the New York Post.
Clifton-Carmack, a divorced mother of two, initially denied the allegations when questioned by detectives in December 2023, but cops found text messages confirming the relationship once they confiscated her cell phone, the outlet reported.
Claiming she was visiting her family, the disgraced teacher took off to Texas just days before Christmas — but her former roommates told police she had moved there permanently.
She was eventually arrested in Comal County, Texas, by the Garden Ridge Police Department in January and hit with a slew of charges before she pleaded them down.