A former Kellyville High School teacher has been sentenced for a second degree rape conviction related to a sexual relationship with an 18-year-old student.

Reports say Kalyn Thompson, 25, was given a sentence of 6 years with all but one year suspended. Because second degree rape is a Level III sex offense, Thompson will be required to register as a sex offender for the rest of her life.

The case started when Thompson, a first-year English teacher at Kellyville High School began texting a 17-year-old student. The text messages soon took on sexual overtones and discussed "getting high." Shortly after the student turned 18, the pair began having sex. The young man allegedly confessed to having sex with his teacher twice: once at a lake and once at a hotel. Investigators discovered a receipt for the hotel stay in Thompson's possession.

Before her arrest, rumors circulated about Thompson's involvement with the student. School officials say she was warned as early as January 2013 not to contact the student outside of school after the two were seen having dinner together. The teen's mother asked Thompson to refrain from contact with her son outside of class after she discovered text messages between her son and his teacher.

Finally, school officials were given more concrete evidence of an inappropriate relationship when two students saw Thompson and the student in his truck off-campus, took cell phone images of them, and reported it to school officials.

Thompson resigned from her position in April 2013 and was arrested in May.

In Oklahoma, the age of consent is 16--not 18 as many people assume. Still, even though the student involved was 18 and two years beyond the age of consent, that does not matter when it comes to sexual relationships between students and school district employees, between inmates and corrections employees, or between DHS wards and DHS employees. 

In fact, sexual relationships between teachers and students under the age of 20 are against the law according to 21 O.S § 1111 (A-8).

The reason for this is that teachers are in a position of authority over their students, and could coerce sexual behavior in exchange for good grades or other favors at the school; alternately, a teacher could "punish" a student for refusing sexual advances by giving bad grades. In Thompson's case, she is accused of inflating the student's failing grade to a near-perfect 98 percent A in her class.

In a recent case in Arkansas, the state Supreme Court ruled in favor of teacher David Paschal's appeal which said that a rule prohibiting sex between consenting adults who happened to be teachers and students was unconstitutional. 

An Oklahoma attorney filed a similar challenge to the law in the case of Tyrone Nash, a teacher convicted of having a sexual relationship with a student, even though she had reached the age of consent in Oklahoma, she initiated the contact between the two by taking his phone and getting his number to begin texting him, and she was not a student in any of his classes and therefore not under his direct supervision or authority.

That challenge failed.