Ex-teacher pleads guilty to sex with boy

The Nebraskan took the 12-year-old student to Mexico.
Associated Press

OMAHA - As part of a deal to ensure she'll spend less than a decade in federal prison, a former teacher pleaded guilty Wednesday to fleeing to Mexico with a 13-year-old student so she could have sex with him.

Kelsey Peterson, 26, cried in court and shook her head when the prosecutor said she started having sex with the boy when he was 12 years old and a student at the middle school in Lexington where she taught.

But she pleaded guilty to a charge of transporting a minor across state lines to have sex, and avoided a similar charge that would have carried a mandatory 10-year sentence.
Peterson and the boy left Lexington in October and were found a week later in Mexicali, Mexico.

Peterson admitted the two of them had sex.

Peterson's attorney, James Martin Davis, has publicly questioned the boy's birth certificate. Davis said the boy was likely at least 16, and that he was the aggressor.

Amy Peck, attorney for the boy and his family, said that suggestion was disgusting.
"He was a 12-year-old boy, and the defendant knew it," Peck said Wednesday.

The plea agreement calls for a sentence of at least 70 months in prison, up to a maximum of 87 months. The judge could decide on a different sentence at a hearing in September, but that would give Peterson the right to change her plea, said federal prosecutor Jan Sharp.