The married New Jersey teacher accused of having a 15-month affair with one of her students shared her bed with the teen during group sleepovers at her home, according to a court document.
The 15-year-old boy told authorities he had sex at least 20 times with teacher Jodi Thorp, 35, who is now seven-months pregnant.
The hot and heavy relationship began in June 2001, after the boy, known to his friends as “Tweety,” joined a nonprofit program Thorp ran for gifted and talented students in inner-city Paterson, where she’s been a public-school teacher for four years. It ended last September.
Alan Bonder, the teen’s lawyer, said the boy’s mother is “very concerned” that her son might be responsible for Thorp’s pregnancy.
“He was having relations with her prior to her being pregnant,” Bonder said. “There may have to be some DNA testing to determine if he’s the father of the child.”
But Thorp’s lawyer, Robert Dunn, said there’s “absolutely no chance” of it.
Thorp’s fireman husband, Patrick Donnelly, is the father through in-vitro fertilization, said Waler LeVine, a lawyer who worked with Thorp on her school program.
Outside his home yesterday, the baby-faced teen assured The Post he now has a girlfriend his own age.
He claims the teacher told him, “I love you,” and lavished him with clothes and expensive gifts.
Tweety said Thorp was so smitten with him that she repeatedly urged him to move into her sprawling Colonial house in upscale Mendham Township, a school buddy of the teen told The Post.
The two allegedly engaged in sex during group weekend overnights at Thorp’s home and on trips sponsored by her nonprofit corporation, HUGS – Helping Underprivileged and Gifted Students.
Another program participant told Paterson police the teen and the teacher slept in the same bed in her home, according to an affidavit filed by sex crimes Detective Anthony DeVincenzo.
DeVincenzo also reported that two witnesses said they had seen Thorp and the student kissing in a sexual way in her home.
His affidavit also quoted the boy’s mother as saying Tweety told her he and Thorp had sex more than 20 times.
As many as 15 youngsters, most of them middle-school students, participated in the HUGS weekend sleepovers at any given time, but no other teens are believed to have been sexually involved with Thorp, the prosecutor’s office said.
Thorp, who met the teen in her seventh-grade social-studies class, faces up to 20 years in jail if convicted of aggravated sexual assault, aggravated criminal sexual contact and endangering the welfare of a child.
Now out on $75,000 bail, Thorp adamantly denies the charges. “None of this ever happened,” insisted her lawyer, Robert Dunn.
“She’s trying to help these kids in Paterson,” he said. “She’s making things available to them that aren’t available in the inner city. She’s trying to broaden their horizons.”
Paterson police began looking into the relationship between the teacher and the teen last November after picking up a HUGS participant suspected of stealing Thorp’s SUV. Four days later, after other students were interviewed, Thorp was suspended from her job without pay.
Shortly after Thorp launched the HUGS program, some teachers voiced concern that she was opening herself up to charges of inappropriate conduct.
“Staff members are told not to be in a classroom alone with students,” said Paterson Education Association president Peter Tirri.