A former student teacher at an American middle school has been sent to prison for sending nude pictures of herself to children.
Emily Edson, a 39-year-old former student teacher at Lamar Middle School in Lamar, Missouri, admitted sending indecent images to three male children. Police say that the victims were all aged 13 at the time.
An investigation into Edson was launched in May 2017 after the mother of one of the victims learned of an inappropriate conversation that had occurred between her son and the student teacher and reported it to the police.
Rusty Rives, Lamar's police chief at the time, said that the mother's report prompted police to interview her son and two other eighth-grade boys at the Children's Center in Nevada.
According to a report by the Joplin Globe, Rives described the conversation that had occurred between the student teacher and one of her victims as "sexually provocative."
A search warrant was obtained for Edson's cell phone, which was seized by police on May 26, 2017. The phone was found to contain nude photographs of two students.
Edson was arrested on June 4, 2017. Three days later, a search warrant was executed on her residence in which police seized a computer, CDs, and an electronic tablet.
In June 2017, Edson was charged with possessing child sexual abuse material. New charges filed against her in February 2019 alleged that Edson sent nude images of herself to three male minors.
According to affidavits filed with the 2019 charges, Edson regularly spoke to one of the boys in a sexual manner and asked him on multiple occasions to have sex with her.
The Barton County prosecutor's office charged Edson with one count of sexual enticement of a child in addition to the three counts of sexual misconduct and two counts of possession of child sexual abuse material. As part of a plea agreement, the enticement count was dropped and the possession charge was swapped to one of promotion.
In Vernon County Circuit Court on Thursday, Judge David Munton sentenced Edson to concurrent terms of four years on each of the four counts.