Former special education teacher Kathryn Houghtaling has been sentenced to 4 to 15 years in prison for having sex with her students, Fox 2 Detroit reports. Houghtaling pleaded no contest to six counts of criminal sexual conduct.
She has been charged with providing one of her students with drugs, and sleeping with two underage boys, one age 16 and the other 17. She will serve time for both the criminal sexual conduct and delivery of a controlled substance to a minor charges concurrently. She will also register as a sex offender and will undergo DNA and HIV testing.
"I've learned to take full responsibility for my actions and seek help for those that I can't control," she said during the sentencing in court. "The concept of going to prison is a scary one." She allegedly engaged in sexual contact with these students after school in her car, although the mother of one of the victims claimed she also snuck into their house late at night to "be with my son."
Houghtaling was allegedly still in contact with one of the victims up to the day she was interviewed by the authorities. "Still, to this minute this defendant has expressed no remorse," a prosecuting attorney told Fox 2. "[She believes] this is everyone else's fault, she blames the victims. She makes statements to the probation agent which I found outrageous, claiming that she was threatened by one of these victims that he would harm her, he would harm her husband, that he would kill her dogs or burn down her house."
