A former Bakersfield teacher and coach avoided prison time after admitting to having a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old student. According to the Ozark County Times, 34-year-old Jason Craig Perkins worked out an agreement with the state of Missouri to plead guilty to two counts of sexual contact with a student, and the other 17 counts he was charged with were dropped. The state's plea agreement recommended a four-year prison sentence for each count to be served consecutively, but Ozark County Circuit Judge Craig Carter suspended the execution of the sentence. Instead, Perkins was sentenced to five years supervised probation and ordered to register as a sex offender, have no contact with the victim, pay $1,100 in restitution and have no unsupervised contact with a female under the age of 18 except his daughter.
Perkins was originally arrested in April after he was alleged to have engaged in sexual contact multiple times with the victim beginning in August 2015. He was released from jail, but his bond was revoked nearly a month later, and he was re-arrested after he allegedly attempted to contact the victim through messages to her friends.
Perkins informed the court in early August of this year he intended to accept a plea agreement with the state.
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