A former Miss Kentucky has been sentenced to 2 years in prison Tuesday, July 13, after admitting to exchanging sexual photos with a teenage student while working as a West Virginia school teacher.

Ramsey BethAnn Bearse, 29, was handed an additional 10 years of supervised release in Kanawha County Circuit Court and was forced to register as a sex offender for life, Lexington Herald-Leader reported.

Bearse pleaded guilty to one count of possessing material depicting minors in sexually explicit conduct as opposed to four counts of sending obscene material to a minor that she had been charged with, in December 2018, according to WCHS 8.

A spokesperson from the Kanawha County school system told the publication that she was suspended from her teaching position at Andrew Jackson Middle School as early as 2018 when an investigation into the case was launched.

The parents of the student in question told deputies that their son, 15, who attended the school from sixth to eighth grade, was being sent explicit photos on the social media app Snapchat, according to Kanawha County court records. Bearse taught in the school during the period the boy attended it.

Bearse had earlier testified that she meant to send the photo to her husband but accidentally sent it to the teen. She claimed that she went on to send a string of obscene photos at his urging because she was "afraid not to appease him."

"I'm sorry that I made a mess of things," she said in court. "I made a mistake."

She won Miss Kentucky beauty pageant title in 2014 under her maiden name of Carpenter, and later competed for the title of Miss America 2015, where she secured a position in the Top 12 semi-finalists, according to her Wikipedia page.

She said Tuesday that she assumed "full responsibility" for her actions.

handcuffs-3655288_640
Representational image of a handcuff. Pixabay
RELATED STORIES