Former Miss Kentucky pleads guilty to sexting 15-year-old ex-student
The former Kentucky beauty queen and middle school teacher busted for sending nude selfies to a 15-year-old former student has pleaded guilty according to a new report.
Ramsey BethAnn Bearse, Miss Kentucky 2014, was arrested Friday in West Virginia and charged with four felonies for sending the illicit snaps.
She pleaded guilty Tuesday to one count of possession of material depicting minors in sexually explicit conduct, ABC 8 reported.
Bearse, who is married, apologized for her actions during her court appearance.
“I’m sorry that I made a mess of things,” Bearse said, according to the report. “I made a mistake.”
Bearse said that things started innocently — as she kept in touch on Snapchat with her former students, asking them about school and their summer.
Things went too far when one young man “asked a lot of questions and I crossed the line and shared too much information of what I was going through at the time,” she said, according to the station.
“Basically, that my husband was working all the time and was too distracted and overwhelmed with work to pay attention to me,” she added. “In addition, since I moved to West Virginia, I felt like I was completely alone. None of my family lives here, and I didn’t have any friends.”
Then, she claimed, she accidentally sent the teen a risqué photo intended for her husband. The boy’s name, she said, was listed next to her husband’s name on her phone.
“From there, [the teen] asked me for more, and I panicked,” she continued, according to the station. “I was afraid to not appease him, and when he asked for more, I sent him more photos of me.”
She ended up sending the teen at least four photographs of her nude breast/chest area, according to a complaint obtained by the outlet.
Bearse was suspended from her teaching position at Andrew Jackson Middle School near Charleston, West Virginia as the investigation proceeded — and a Kanawha County school system spokesperson confirmed to the local outlet Tuesday she was no longer employed there.
The boy’s parent said that her son attended the school from sixth through eighth grade — and Bearse taught there during some of that time, according to the complaint.