US teacher not guilty of threesome with student, colleague

A US teacher accused of having a threesome with a 16-year-old boy and another teacher has been found not guilty.

Shelley Dufresne, 34, had been charged with two counts of carnal knowledge of a juvenile over a month-long affair with a schoolboy in the town of Kenner, near New Orleans.

The student, now 19, told a court Dufresne had contacted him over Facebook in 2014 and an affair had begun.

But Judge Danyelle Taylor declared Dufresne not guilty yesterday, citing the teen's "braggadocios nature" and "propensity to lie".

"I do not believe that the threshold has been met by the evidence presented to this court," she said.

Another teacher, Rachel Respess, 26, was charged with failure to report the affair, even though she was also implicated in having group sex with Dufresne and the student.

The court heard the teen changed his story about the tryst because he had illegally filmed the privates of Respess while she was asleep, then showed the video to his football teammates.

Dufresne had earlier pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of obscenity and admitted to having sex with the student in St Charles Parish, where their school is based.

But she faced the more serious charge of carnal knowledge in neighbouring Jefferson Parish, where prosecutors argued she had also had sex with the boy.

Parishes in Louisiana function as counties elsewhere in the United States, with separate judicial systems in each.

So because Dufresne was accused of having sex with the schoolboy in two different parishes, she faced two separate trials.

Dufresne was given a deferred three-year prison sentence and probation for the lesser charge.

The effective slap-on-the-wrist drew the ire of the Metropolitan Crime Commission in New Orleans, given Dufresne's father is a local judge.

"She did these things. She had an improper relationship. She broke the law, and she should be punished," her own lawyer Kim McElwee told the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

"But there's a difference between innocent and not guilty. They have to prove their case and they didn't come close."

The teenager was not in the courtroom as the verdict was read, but his mother sitting in the front row broke down as Dufresne was found not guilty.

Both Dufresne and Respess were sacked by Destrehan High School after their arrests.

Last year a teacher from the same school was arrested for having sex with a student.

Kimberly Naquin pleaded guilty last month to having a year-long sexual relationship with a 16-year-old girl.

She was handed a suspended five-and-a-half-year prison sentence.

"School is supposed to be a safe place for children to mature and to learn, and this teacher has ruined that," the girl's father said.

Naquin, the daughter of the local school board president, was also sacked after her arrest.

In 2009 a band teacher at Destrehan High pleaded guilty to having sex with a 16-year-old schoolgirl and trying to kiss a 17-year-old.

Toups then locked the older student in a room at band camp and told her not to tell anybody about it.

He spent a year behind bars for malfeasance, intimidation of a witness and simple battery.