SPRINGFIELD, Mo. – A former Joplin, Missouri, middle school teacher has pleaded guilty in federal court to charges related to enticing one of her students to engage in illicit sex.
Amanda Ruth Schweitzer, 41, pleaded guilty before U.S. Magistrate Judge David P. Rush on Tuesday, June 16, to enticing a minor for illegal sexual activity.
Schweitzer was a teacher at North Middle School in Joplin at the time of the offense.
The 13-year-old victim, who was a student of Schweitzer’s, reported Schweitzer sent nude photos of herself to the victim, with whom she primarily communicated via Instagram, and engaged in sexual intercourse with the victim on at least two occasions in March 2017. The victim reported that he also sent a nude image of himself to Schweitzer.
The Joplin Globe reported: The mother of two of the boys brought them to the center for interviews and informed a detective that one of her sons had disclosed to her that he engaged in sexual intercourse with Schweitzer the previous day. She gave the detective a bag containing the boy’s shorts and told him that she had not allowed her son to bathe prior to any examination that might be needed.
The boy who made the disclosure told investigators during his interview that Schweitzer began sending text messages to him several weeks earlier.
“She told him that he was hot and that she wanted him,” the detective wrote in the report.
He primarily communicated with her using the Instagram app on his phone, the boy told investigators. She had sent him photographs of her breasts and other nude photos of herself in the past, including one involving a sex toy, according to the report. She also asked him to send her photos of himself, he told investigators.
The week preceding the week of the interview, it was spring break and Schweitzer had taken him “to the river” in her car, and they had sex for the first time, the boy told investigators. She was intoxicated and offered him some of her drink, but he refused, the boy told investigators.
She then touched him and performed a sex act on him followed by intercourse, the boy told investigators. Afterward, he asked her to take him home and she dropped him off a couple of blocks from his house.
Under federal statutes, Schweitzer is subject to a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in federal prison without parole, up to a sentence of life in federal prison without parole.
