By Bill Conrad w/Plano Star
A former Prestonwood Christian Academy teacher has been indicted by a grand jury in Collin County. Adam Ronald Johnson, 27, has been accused of having an improper relationship between an educator and a student, a second-degree felony.
Johnson, who lived in Frisco at the time of the alleged crime, was arrested in November. Since being arrested, he has been released on $10,000 bond.
According to the documents obtained from the Frisco Police Department, Johnson and a then-17-year-old female student had approximately seven sexual encounters beginning in March 2010.
Police records show that Johnson, who was 26 at the time of the alleged encounters, first met the student during her freshman year when he was a substitute teacher in her history class. The student told police Johnson later substituted in her art class and served as her conditioning coach.
Police records say that around November or December 2009, Johnson and the student exchanged phone numbers on Facebook and began texting one another. The student told police that the first time anything besides talking occurred was around March 15 when she went to Johnson’s apartment on Wade Boulevard in Frisco. At this time, the two performed sexual acts on each other.
The student told police that similar encounters occurred on four or five more occasions in the parking lot at Shepton High School in Plano and the parking lot of the Dr Pepper Center in Frisco.
Under a Texas law passed in 2003, it is illegal for an employee of a public or private primary or secondary school to engage in sexual contact with a person who is enrolled at the school in which the employee works. The legal age of consent in Texas is 17, but the law makes it a crime for sexual contact to occur between an educator and student, regardless of the student’s age.
Prestonwood officials confirmed that Johnson is no longer employed at the school. The head of Prestonwood Academy, Dr. Larry Taylor, issued a statement Wednesday afternoon. The statement reads in part:
“On Aug. 26, 2010, Prestonwood Christian Academy asked for and received the resignation, effective immediately, of Adam Johnson. The resignation followed an internal investigation conducted on Aug. 26, resulting in the employee’s confession of an off-campus improper relationship with a high school student.”
In the statement, Taylor said that he was “appalled and disgusted” by Johnson’s behavior and that after learning of the relationship, PCA notified law enforcement and Child Protective Services.
If convicted, Johnson could face between two and 20 years in prison.
