A former teacher who was accused in 2018 of having sex with one of her students has pleaded no contest to a charge of sexual activity with a child.
Suzanne Owen, 36, is set to be sentenced June 24. The maximum penalty Owen could face is life in prison. She made the plea in court Monday.
Owen was a teacher at Evangelical Christian School in south Fort Myers when the Lee County Sheriff’s Office arrested her last year. The student was 17 years old at the time and was in a Spanish class that Owen taught, court records show.
Owen and the student met April 4, 2018, in a parking lot at U.S. 41 and Cypress Lake Drive. Owen and the student admitted to investigators that they had intercourse on the backseat of Owen’s car, according to a Sheriff’s Office report.
The State Attorney’s Office would not discuss the case. “We can’t discuss the case until after sentencing since it is still an open case,” a spokeswoman for the office wrote in an email.
Owen and the student began exchanging messages by email and text a little more than a month before they met in the parking lot. Court records include some of the messages. The messages were about school work, a dress Owen wore and their plan to meet.
“I was hoping you would like it,” Owen wrote during a text message exchange about the dress. “You are so damn distracting in class every day.”
Owen is charged under a Florida statute that makes it illegal for a person who has “custodial authority” to have sex with someone between the ages of 12 and 17.