A former Cabot junior high school teacher who pleaded guilty last month to more than a dozen counts of sexual assault involving a juvenile student has been sentenced to six years in prison and ordered to register as a sex offender.
Prosecuting Attorney Chuck Graham said Stacy Stracener was sentenced Tuesday morning in Lonoke County Circuit Court to 15 years in prison with nine of them suspended. Stracener must serve at least two years before becoming eligible for parole.
Stracener was arrested last February after Cabot police received a report about possible inappropriate contact between her and a 15-year-old student at Cabot Junior High North.
Graham said Stracener pleaded guilty last month to all of the charges against her: 11 counts of first-degree sexual assault and two counts of second-degree sexual assault.
He said the plea deal was a good outcome for the state and the victim.
"The ultimate thing — you don't have a victim that has to stand up and go into court and talk about things they'd rather not talk about in front of other people," Graham said, noting prison time and an assurance Stracener would never teach again were "non-negotiable" in the deal: "Those were things that just had to happen, from my perspective, or we would have had to go to trial."
Stracener was also ordered to pay about $700 in fines, not to have any contact with the victim and to register as a sex offender for at least the next 15 years. Graham said her teaching license has already been suspended.
