OGDEN -- Just another tale of love and romance.
She was 16, he was 44. She was in high school and working at Roy Junior High School as a janitor. He was a popular teacher there.
She's still working there today. He's on his way to Utah State Prison.
"Absolutely incredible," 2nd District Judge Ernie Jones told Kenneth Taylor as he sentenced him to up to five years in prison Wednesday.
"You were having sex with a student at the school."
The young woman, now 18, had just stood to ask the judge to consider the minimum sentence for Taylor, now 46. She also asked that he lift the no-contact order Taylor is under.
But even Taylor's attorney agreed with the prosecution's request that the no-contact order remain in force.
Because of the order, the young woman hasn't been able to talk to Taylor since the police investigation began in August, she told reporters before the hearing.
"I'd like to get some closure. I'd like to see how he is, to see how his family is, to apologize," she said.
She got up from the second row in the courtroom gallery, dropping her purse in the lap of her mother in the front row as she walked past the courtroom bar to address the judge.
After her short, calm plea for leniency, she picked up her purse from her mother as she returned to her seat.
They did not walk out together when the hearing ended.
"I'm really mad at them right now," she told reporters. "I could care less if they're disappointed with me."
Addressing the judge next, the young woman's father, a Roy farmer, said, "When you send your daughter to a school ... you expect that's the safest place for her."
He railed at Taylor, who stood abjectly at the podium with his defense attorney, nodding solemnly.
"If he has a teenage daughter like he says, what was he thinking? ... Would he want this to happen to her?" the man said.
"She can't go to school now because they all call her (expletives), that this is all her fault."
Her grades have slipped; she is drinking, smoking cigarettes and has moved out of the house while trying to finish her diploma at an alternative high school; she spent 12 days in the University of Utah mental health unit after a suicide attempt, the father said.
For officials, the case is exactly the reason laws such as unlawful sexual conduct with a 16- or 17-year-old are in place.
Taylor was charged with six counts of the third-degree felony for the yearlong or longer relationship, but he pleaded guilty to three in a plea bargain in January.
It's a statutory offense, meaning the victim by law is not old enough to give consent to a sexual relationship.
"I was a willing participant," the girl told reporters. "It's a bad situation neither of us saw coming."
Wrong, said the judge.
"You know what the law is," Jones told Taylor. "She can't consent. You're 45, 46 years old. You're the one who has to say, 'This has to stop.'
"Just about everyone here in this courtroom sends kids off to school every day," the judge said.
"This is the kind of case that really rocks at the very foundation of what we're trying to accomplish with our school system."
The victim has refused to cooperate with police, Deputy Weber County Attorney Dean Saunders told Jones.
"She refuses in counseling to see that the relationship is wrong. This is going to affect her relationships for the rest of her life," Saunders said.
She was an employee at the junior high school during much, if not all, of the sexual contact with Taylor, prosecutors said.
If she had been a student in one of his classes at the time, Taylor would have faced aggravated sexual abuse charges and a possible life prison term, Saunders and his boss, county attorney Dee Smith, told reporters after the trial.
"We could never establish that she was his student, so there was no direct violation of a position of trust, which would have been a first- degree felony," Saunders said.
In brief remarks, Taylor apologized to everyone involved, and defense attorney Michael Edwards made a bid for leniency, arguing "jail time with work release makes sense. He's genuinely remorseful for the harm he's caused to the victim and her family, as well as his own family."
Taylor's wife and family stand by him, although he's still working to regain his children's respect, Edwards said.
"The mistake he made was to let the relationship go to a sexual level, as people often don't think clearly in these situations."
Taylor's shame includes spending the next 13 years on the sex offender registry, Edwards said. Taylor has already lost his job and his career. He works in construction these days.
"If he goes to prison," Edwards said, "the family will lose their home."
Comments