A San Diego County educator, once appointed Teacher of the Year, was sentenced to 30 years in prison for grooming and sexually assaulting two young boys in a national city elementary school classroom.
According to the San Diego County Law Office, Jacqueline Ma used her role as a fifth and sixth grade teacher at Lincoln Acre primary school to manipulate the victims and even complete gifts, special attention and homework.
When one of her victims was not permitted to access social media or personal electronics at home, she set up an unauthorized after-school program and directed her to send a message through a school chat application, prosecutors said.
The 36-year-old teacher pleaded guilty in February on two counts of forced indecency against a child, one crime of indecency against a child, and one child sexual abuse material.
She was arrested by the National Police Station in March 2023 after the mother of one of the victims reported inappropriate messages she found between her son and MA on a family tablet. Investigators learned that MA had been grooming the boy for more than a year before he sexually abused him when he was 12 years old.
The MA had sex with the boy in the classroom for three months, but his parents thought he was in an after-school basketball program, prosecutors said.
Investigators also found that in 2020 he groomed and sexually assaulted the second victim, an 11-year-old boy.
“This defendant violates the trust he had with his students in the most extreme and traumatic ways possible, and her actions are despicable,” Dist. Atty. In the summer, Stephen said in a statement. “Her victims need to deal with lifelong negative consequences, and her 30-year sentence is appropriate.”
MA has been named Teacher of the Year for the 2022-23 grade by the San Diego County Department of Education. According to her profile at the San Diego Union Tribune, she received her bachelor’s degree in biology and in education from San Diego, California, and has been teaching fifth and sixth graders in the National School District since 2013.
She used her reputation as an educator mentioned above, which was personally invested in the success of students to gain the trust of the victim’s parents, prosecutors said.
“No child deserves what this defendant did,” Stephen said. “We hope that this sentence will provide a measure of justice for the victims, their families and communities involved in this defendant’s crime.”
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