Jennifer Fichter

Last updated
Jennifer Fichter
Born (1984-12-08) December 8, 1984 (age 39)
United States
NationalityAmerican
Education Paxon School for Advanced Studies
Alma mater University of Florida
OccupationEnglish teacher
Years active2007–2014
Employer(s)Robinswood Middle School (Orange County, Florida), Kathleen High School
Criminal chargeSexual battery
Criminal penalty22 years' imprisonment
Criminal statusConvicted and incarcerated

Jennifer Christine Fichter (born December 8, 1984) is an American former teacher who was convicted in Polk County, Florida, United States, in 2015 of sexual battery against three 17-year-old male students. [1] [2] [3] She was sentenced to 22 years imprisonment. [4]

Contents

Early life and career

Jennifer Fichter was born on December 8, 1984, and graduated from Paxon School for Advanced Studies in Jacksonville, Florida, in June 2003. She then attended the University of Florida from August 2003 to December 2006 earning a Bachelor of Arts Degree majoring in English. She held instructional teaching positions at Robinswood Middle School, Orange County, Florida, from August 13, 2007, to December 19, 2008, when she resigned pending the outcome an investigation for alleged offenses of inappropriate behavior. [5]

Sexual abuse, trial, and sentencing

Fichter was hired as an English teacher at Kathleen High School on August 29, 2011, and was paid US$40,530 per year. Fichter was fired by the Polk County School Board on April 22, 2014, after her arrest for sexual interaction with three of her male students, all 17 years old, more than 37 times between August 2012 and April 2014. [6]

As of June 7, 2014, Fichter was being held in the Polk County Jail with a bond set at US$520,000. [7] Fichter was convicted and, on July 2, 2015, was sentenced to 22 years' imprisonment. [8] A Polk County judge called her a predator during sentencing. [9] The sentencing by Judge Glenn T. Shelby was immediately controversial, with the unusually long sentence being reviled by many, especially in Europe. [10] [11] Fichter is currently imprisoned in Gadsden Correctional Facility and is scheduled for release on January 19, 2035, when she will be age 50. [12]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bartow, Florida</span> City in Florida, United States

Bartow is a city and the county seat of Polk County, Florida, United States. Founded in 1851 as Fort Blount, the city was renamed in honor of Francis S. Bartow, the first brigade commander of the Confederate Army to die in combat during the American Civil War. It is part of the Lakeland−Winter Haven Metropolitan Statistical Area, which had an estimated population of 787,404, as of July 1, 2022. According to the 2020 Census, the city had a population of 19,309.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary Kay Letourneau</span> American sex offender (1962–2020)

Mary Katherine "Mary Kay" Fualaau, was an American sex offender and teacher who pleaded guilty in 1997 to two counts of felony second-degree rape of a child. Letourneau was 34, and the child, Vili Fualaau, was 12 years old when she initiated the sexual abuse. He was her sixth-grade student at an elementary school in Burien, Washington. While awaiting sentencing, she gave birth to Fualaau's daughter. With the state seeking a seven and a half year prison sentence, she reached a plea agreement calling for six months in jail with three months suspended and no contact with Fualaau for life, among other terms. The case received national attention.

Pamela Ann Smart is an American woman who was convicted of being an accomplice to first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and witness tampering in the death of her husband, Greggory Smart, in 1990. Smart, then aged 22, had conspired with her underaged boyfriend, then 15-year-old William "Billy" Flynn, and three of his friends to have Greggory (24) murdered in Derry, New Hampshire. She is currently serving a life sentence at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women, a maximum security prison in Westchester County, New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Debra Lafave</span> American former teacher known for sexual battery against a teenager

Debra Jean Williams, better known under her former married name of Debra Lafave, is a convicted sex offender who formerly taught at Angelo L. Greco Middle School in Temple Terrace, Florida. In 2005, she pleaded guilty to lewd or lascivious battery against a teenager. The charges stemmed from a sexual encounter with a 14-year-old student in mid-2004. Lafave's plea bargain included no prison time, opting for three years of house arrest due to safety concerns, seven years of probation, and lifetime registration as a sex offender.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Polk Museum of Art</span> Art museum in Lakeland, Florida

The Polk Museum of Art at Florida Southern College is a private, non-profit, and nationally accredited art museum in Lakeland, Florida. It is a member of the Florida Association of Museums, is ranked among the top art museums in the state of Florida, and is a Smithsonian Affiliate. Admission to the museum is free to the general public. On June 1, 2017, the Polk Museum of Art, a private community museum, entered an affiliation agreement with Florida Southern College in order to advance the mission of both entities and better serve the community.

Pamela Joan Rogers is an American former elementary school physical education teacher and coach who taught in McMinnville, Tennessee. She was convicted of four counts of sexual battery in 2005 and two counts of solicitation of sexual exploitation of a minor in 2006 stemming from a three-month relationship with a 13-year-old boy who was her student at Centertown Elementary School. Her case made headlines and was covered by major news networks for being a notorious teacher who had an unlawful sexual relationship with one of her students. After getting released in 2012, she was taken into custody in 2015 for allegedly conspiring to smuggle contraband cell phones into a state prison and sentenced to 8 years in prison; her case brought headlines and national attention to the practice of cellphone smuggling in prison.

A sex offender is a person who has committed a sex crime. What constitutes a sex crime differs by culture and legal jurisdiction. The majority of convicted sex offenders have convictions for crimes of a sexual nature; however, some sex offenders have simply violated a law contained in a sexual category. Some of the serious crimes which usually result in a mandatory sex-offender classification are sexual assault, statutory rape, bestiality, child sexual abuse, incest, rape, and sexual imposition.

Day-care sex-abuse hysteria was a moral panic that occurred primarily during the 1980s and early 1990s, and featured charges against day-care providers accused of committing several forms of child abuse, including Satanic ritual abuse. The collective cases are often considered a part of the Satanic panic. A 1982 case in Kern County, California, United States, first publicized the issue of day-care sexual abuse, and the issue figured prominently in news coverage for almost a decade. The Kern County case was followed by cases elsewhere in the United States, as well as Canada, New Zealand, Brazil, and various European countries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Central California Women's Facility</span> Female prison in Chowchilla, California

Central California Women's Facility (CCWF) is a female-only California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation state prison located in Chowchilla, California. It is across the road from Valley State Prison. CCWF is the second largest female correctional facility in the United States, and houses the only State of California death row for women.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roman Catholic Diocese of Orlando</span> Diocese of the Catholic Church

The Diocese of Orlando is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory, or diocese, of the Catholic Church in central Florida in the United States. St. James Cathedral serves as the seat of the diocese. The current bishop is John Gerard Noonan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Dean Schwab</span> American child rapist and murderer (1968–2008)

Mark Dean Schwab was an American murderer and child rapist. He was convicted of the April 18, 1991, rape and murder of 11-year-old Junny Rios-Martinez, Jr. and imprisoned at Raiford Prison in Florida. Schwab was convicted of the crime in 1992 and sentenced to death by lethal injection. In addition, he received two life sentences. His execution was the first in Florida after executions were temporarily halted following the botched lethal injection of Ángel Nieves Díaz.

This is a list of notable overturned convictions in the United States.

Ryan Keith Skipper was an American man from Polk County, Florida, who was murdered on March 14, 2007, in what authorities declared a hate crime. Skipper's body was discovered on March 15 along a roadside in Wahneta, Florida. Two men were arrested in connection with the crime: William David Brown Jr., and Joseph Bearden, 20 and 21 years old at the time of the incident, respectively. The men were charged with first-degree murder and robbery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Florida Polytechnic University</span> Public university in Lakeland, Florida, United States

Florida Polytechnic University is a public university in Lakeland, Florida. Created as an independent university in 2012, it is the newest of the 12 institutions in the State University System of Florida. It is the state's only public polytechnic university, and focuses solely on STEM education.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Union Correctional Institution</span> State prison in Union County, Florida

The Union Correctional Institution, formerly referred to as Florida State Prison, Raiford Prison and State Prison Farm is a Florida Department of Corrections state prison located in unincorporated Union County, Florida, near Raiford.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lowell Correctional Institution</span> Prison in Florida, United States

Lowell Correctional Institution is a women's prison in unincorporated Marion County, Florida, north of Ocala, in the unincorporated area of Lowell. A part of the Florida Department of Corrections, it serves as the primary prison for women in the state. Almost 3,000 women are incarcerated in the complex, which includes the Lowell Annex. As of 2015 2,696 women are in the main Lowell CI, making it the largest prison for women in the United States; its prison population became larger than that of the Central California Women's Facility that year.

In common law jurisdictions, statutory rape is nonforcible sexual activity in which one of the individuals is below the age of consent. Although it usually refers to adults engaging in sexual contact with minors under the age of consent, it is a generic term, and very few jurisdictions use the actual term statutory rape in the language of statutes. In statutory rape, overt force or threat is usually not present. Statutory rape laws presume coercion because a minor or mentally disabled adult is legally incapable of giving consent to the act.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Federal Correctional Institution, Sandstone</span> Federal prison in Sandstone, Minnesota

The Federal Correctional Institution, Sandstone is a low-security United States federal prison for male offenders in Sandstone, Minnesota. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BoP), a division of the United States Department of Justice.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Federal Correctional Institution, Elkton</span> Low-security United States prison in Ohio

The Federal Correctional Institution, Elkton is a low-security United States federal prison for male inmates near Elkton, Ohio. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States Department of Justice. It also has an adjacent satellite prison camp that houses low and minimum-security male inmates.

Kristina Joy Fetters was an Iowa woman who was convicted of the murder of her 73-year-old great-aunt, Arlene Klehm, on October 25, 1994, when she was 14 years old. At age 15, Fetters became the youngest woman in Iowa sentenced to life in prison without parole on December 18, 1995. Following the 2012 Supreme Court decision of Miller v. Alabama, which declared mandatory life sentences for juvenile offenders to be unconstitutional, Fetters became the first inmate in Iowa to be re-sentenced in November 2013. The following month, she was recommended for compassionate parole due to a prognosis of inoperable stage-four breast cancer, and she was released to a hospice care center in Des Moines, Iowa in December 2013. She succumbed to her cancer in July 2014, at age 34.

References

  1. "Former Florida teacher sentenced to 22 years for having sex with high school students | New York's PIX11 / WPIX-TV". Pix11.com. 2015-07-04. Retrieved 2015-07-09.
  2. "Florida Teacher Jennifer Fichter Pleads Guilty To 37 Counts In Student Sex Case". Huffingtonpost.com. 6 April 2015. Retrieved 2015-07-09.
  3. "State of Florida v. Jennifer C. Fichter" (PDF). Archive.wtsp.com. Retrieved 2015-07-09.[ dead link ]
  4. Glasser, Eric (2015-07-02). "Lakeland teacher gets 22 years for sex with 3 students". WTSP . Archived from the original on 2015-07-13. Retrieved 2021-12-08.
  5. "Orange County Schools – Jennifer Fichter" (PDF). S3.documentcloud.org. Retrieved 2015-07-09.
  6. Ledger, John Chambliss The. "Convicted teacher seeks lighter sentence". The Ledger.
  7. Fichter, Jennifer. "Polk County Inmates". www.polksherf.org. Polk County Sheriffs Office. Archived from the original on 26 April 2014. Retrieved 2014-06-07.
  8. Glasser, Eric (2015-07-02). "Lakeland teacher gets 22 years for sex with 3 students". WTSP . Archived from the original on 2015-07-13. Retrieved 2021-12-08.
  9. "'Predator' teacher Jennifer Fichter gets 22 years for sex with students". CBS News. 2015-07-03. Retrieved 2015-07-09.
  10. Bounds, Holly (2015-07-09). "Europeans supporting former Polk teacher jailed for sex with students". WFLA.com. Retrieved 2016-07-08.
  11. Walker, Tori (2015-07-15). "Teacher sentenced to long prison term for sex with teen garners following". The Daytona Beach News-Journal . GateHouse Media. Archived from the original on 2019-11-01. Retrieved 2021-12-08.
  12. "Inmate Population Information List". www.dc.state.fl.us.