A former high school teacher avoided jail time after pleading guilty Tuesday to having sex with one her students.
Teika Helton, who has taught for more than two decades in Gaston County Public Schools, will have to give up her teaching license.
"Anything you want to say or not?" the judge asked Helton.
"No, sir," Helton said.
Her deferred prosecution allowed her a sentence of two years of probation for crimes against nature, a charge that she can later have removed from her record.
The mother of the 18-year-old man, who has already graduated from South Point High School, was not happy with the sentence.
"My son was groomed for three years by a pedophile and ultimately robbed of his innocence," she said.
Prosecutors said Helton and the student connected during a school field trip. They exchanged text messages that the district attorney called inappropriate but not illegal.
The DA said the 18-year-old just wants the ordeal to end quietly.
"I think (the sentence) was way too light," his mother said. "I was hoping and praying an example could be made of her so this doesn't happen again."
The DA said it won't, because Helton has to surrender her teaching certificate.
The former student said they had sex just before he graduated. Helton said it happened after he turned 18 and became a legal adult.
"If we had gone to trial and the jury said, 'We don't know which date,' then there would be no punishment at all," the DA said. "She would be teaching again."
Helton was sentenced to 200 hours of community service along with the probation, in both cases twice as much as normal.
That was not enough for the teen's mother.
"It's sad," she said. "No apology for my family."
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