SAN DIEGO (CNS) — A Mount Carmel High School teacher who allegedly engaged in a yearslong sexual relationship with an underage female student pleaded not guilty today to 17 felony counts.
Stacy Michelle Walker, 40, was arrested Wednesday for what a prosecutor said was "a highly inappropriate relationship'' that began when the victim was 15 years old.
Deputy District Attorney Vanessa Gerard said the interactions between Walker and the victim continued until 2020, when the victim was 18.
Police say the crimes began with sexual conversations that led to exchanges of explicit text messages, photographs and videos, and then sex acts.
The victim reported the alleged crimes to San Diego police last July, SDPD Lt. Dan Sayasane said.
Walker faces up to 13 years in state prison if she is convicted of all counts, which include charges of sexual penetration by a foreign object, oral copulation of a person under 18, and contacting a minor with the intent to commit a sexual offense. A criminal complaint states the crimes allegedly occurred in 2018 and 2019.
Walker was initially held on $405,000 bail, but bail was reset Friday to $150,000 following a stipulation between the prosecution and Walker's defense attorneys.
If she is released, Walker is ordered not to contact the victim, to stay away from minors unless they are immediate family members, and to agree to a ``Fourth Waiver,'' which allows law enforcement to search her person or property without a warrant.
A 2015 article from the school's student newspaper identifies Walker as a drama and theater tech teacher. It also says she is a former Mount Carmel High student.
``I love being back. I love being a Sundevil again,'' she told the MC Sun. ``I was interviewing for jobs at a couple other schools but in my heart I always wanted to come back here.''
The Poway Unified School District said Walker was placed on leave last summer when the allegations arose, while Mt. Carmel's principal, Yael Bozzay, wrote in a recent letter to parents that -- without naming Walker -- she has not taught at Mt. Carmel this school year.
One of Walker's former students, Isaiah Jones, attended Walker's arraignment and told reporters that the allegations ``didn't feel real.''
Jones said, ``She's the last kind of person I would have expected to do this.''
Walker was one of two San Diego youth educators arrested within hours of each other for alleged sex-related crimes involving minors.
On Wednesday, 41-year-old Charles Thomas Boyd De Freitas, an associate principal at Hoover High School in City Heights, was jailed on suspicion of possessing and distributing child pornography, police said. He's set to be arraigned next week.
