California Teacher, 41 resigns after leaving wife, kids for student, 18

[Deberg_1990]

Originally Posted by Brock

Yeah, this is really a romance for the ages.

Indeed. Shes already left him.



http://www.modbee.com/2012/04/07/214...ex-enochs.html


MODESTO -- It's over, says Jordan Powers, the 18-year-old high school student who quit school to move in with her teacher.

The 41-year-old James Hooker was arrested by Modesto police Friday on charges of sexually assaulting another teenage girl 14 years ago.

"He called me from jail and yes, I told him that we're done," Powers told ABC News on Saturday morning. "I lost everything for this guy. I lost my senior year. I gave up all my friends at high school because they didn't agree with me."

Hooker posted $50,000 bail about 5 a.m. Saturday and was released from the Stanislaus County Jail, sheriff's officials said. He avoided reporters who spotted him riding a bicycle in a park and in his apartment complex.

Until February, Powers was a student at Enochs High School and Hooker was a business teacher and adviser to several campus clubs. The former couple has said their student-teacher relationship became romantic last fall, after Powers turned 18.

The Modesto City Schools District suspended Hooker on Feb. 3 during an initial investigation. He left his wife and three daughters two weeks later and moved into an apartment in Modesto. He moved Powers out of her mother's house and into the apartment days later. He resigned his teaching position the same day and remains unemployed.

Powers' mother, Tammie Powers, vigorously opposed the relationship, using her Facebook account to berate Hooker and accuse him of wooing her daughter before she turned 18. Tammie Powers said she discovered an estimated 8,000 text messages between the two dating to last summer.

Modesto police began their own investigation, even as Hooker and Jordan Powers became overnight media celebrities. After The Bee published a story about their relationship, they appeared on ABC's "Good Morning America" and the syndicated "Dr. Phil" show to defend themselves.

Tammie Powers kept up her social media campaign, appeared opposite them on "Dr. Phil" and worked with Modesto Assemblywoman Kristin Olsen on legislation that would make such student-teacher relationships a crime in California, even if the student is 18.

Hooker's arrest Friday had nothing to do with his involvement with Jordan Powers. Police say they have developed evidence that he was involved with a 17-year-old girl in 1998 while a teacher at Davis High School in Modesto. Police say the alleged victim was attending a local high school but was not a Davis student.

Hooker appeared briefly in court Friday afternoon. He is charged with one count of oral copulation with a minor.

"He told me that he met her online and he hung out with her just as friends and then he went to her house and she came out of the bathroom naked and he only touched her boobs and her legs," Jordan Powers told ABC. "He was freaked out so he left and went home. He said nothing else happened, but all of that was a lie."

Jordan Powers has always maintained that her romance with Hooker did not begin until after her 18th birthday in September. She said in late February he was getting a divorce but that they had no plans to marry. She was working to finish her classes through independent study and had been accepted to Modesto Junior College, hoping to become a nurse.

His confession to her from jail about a prior affair was devastating.

"He did not deny it. My heart dropped. I felt betrayed," she said. "I just have a gut feeling that there's other girls."

"How could he lie to me for all these months and look me in the eye and tell me he loves me?" she told ABC. "I don't know how someone could have such a cold heart."

Read more here: http://www.modbee.com/2012/04/07/214...#storylink=cpy