Former Hartville Kindergarten Teacher Sentenced On Sex Charges:

A former Hartville kindergarten teacher has pleaded guilty to having sexual contact with a student on public school property.

In exchange for her guilty plea, prosecutors agreed to drop a misdemeanor charge of furnishing pornographic materials to a minor against 39 year-old Katherine Hicks.

Hicks was bound over on the charges at the end of last month and pleaded guilty to the felony sex charge when she was arraigned in associate circuit court last Thursday. She was sentenced to three years supervised probation, ordered to complete a state sexual offender program, register as a convicted sex offender and have no contact with the student.

Wright County authorities say that the mother of the seventeen year-old boy, who was an A+ tutor for Hicks' classroom, came to them with concerns after hearing reports of inappropriate behavior between her son and Hicks.

The probable cause statement says that when investigators interviewed the boy he told cops that he and Hicks had an ongoing personal relationship that included, "kissing, him touching her breast, both of them grabbing each other on the butt, and an exchange of nude pictures and dirty text messages by cell phone."

Hick's didn't admit to anything other than exchanging text messages with the student when questioned by authorities.

When asked about the "naked pictures and dirty messages" that the duo had allegedly sent each other, she declined to answer any more questions and requested her attorney.

https://www.courts.mo.gov/casenet/cases/searchCases.do

09W1-CR00166 - STATE V KATHERINE DANENE HICKS

09W1-CR00167 - STATE V KATHERINE DANENE HICKS