A 35-year-old married teacher may receive a jail sentence after pleading guilty to charges of sleeping with a 13-year-old male former student - two months after giving birth to the teenager's daughter.
The elementary school teacher, Ms Mary Kay LeTourneau, entered the guilty plea earlier this week to save the youth from having to face the agony of a trial, said her lawyer, Mr David Gehrke.
Ms LeTourneau now faces up to seven and a half years in prison on two counts of second-degree rape of a child. She will return to court for sentencing on August 29th.
"I think what I've done is terrible and I wouldn't want anyone to think that I believe it's acceptable," Ms LeTourneau told the Seattle Times. She also told the newspaper that she still had "romantic feelings" for the boy. She is forbidden to see him.
The youth, who authorities have not identified, first met Ms LeTourneau when he was seven years old. He last had her as a teacher in 1995. The teenager is being kept in seclusion, sometimes with relatives who live out of town.
However the boy, who is now 14, said he was tired of having no say in the affair. "I want people to stop seeing me as a victim," he said. "My life is going to be fine."
The couple's friendship became sexual last summer, the youth told authorities, and they slept together about a half dozen times between June 1996 and February.
The affair came to light after Ms LeTourneau, who has four other children between the ages of three and 12, became pregnant.
She said she did not want to have an abortion, but also knew that the community would know who the parent was because the child would be racially mixed.
Although Ms LeTourneau has custody of the infant, authorities are now forbidding her from being alone with her children or any other minors. The youth's mother will gain custody of the baby after Ms LeTourneau is sentenced later this month.
Ms LeTourneau is an attractive, popular teacher at the Shorewood Elementary School in the town of Burien, just outside Seattle. Her classes are so popular that there is a waiting list to get into them.
Ms LeTourneau's husband Steve told relatives about his wife's pregnancy, and eventually one of them alerted school authorities. Her husband has since filed for divorce and taken her four other children to live with him in Alaska.
Mr Gehrke said he would request a reduced sentence and mandatory sexual deviancy treatment for his client.
The teenager, described by his parents as "mature beyond his years", remains frustrated at the outcome.
"Mary didn't harm me in any way," he told the newspaper. "Who are they to say that I'm too young to know anything when they don't even know me?"