Corona teacher pleads not guilty to student sex charges

A Corona high school teacher charged with having sex with five male students pleaded not guilty Thursday.

Summer Michelle Hansen, 31, a special-education teacher at Centennial High School, was charged last month with 16 felony counts involving sex acts with five boys younger than 18 within one year. None were students she taught regularly.

Authorities say she sent naked pictures of herself to one student and committed a sex act in a classroom with another student moments after school concluded.

Riverside County prosecutors allege that from May 2012 to May 2013, Hansen committed sexual acts with the teenagers, who were as young as 16, in her classroom, in a campus utility room, in her vehicle parked near a youth’s home and at the home of one of the teenagers.

Hansen and her defense attorney, David Cohn, say that the allegations are false.

“Do teenagers lie? Sure they do. Do they say something and then really believe it and move forward? Yes,” Cohn told KTLA-TV. “These boys all know each other. If they didn’t know each other and had no connection to each other, then you would start to wonder.”

The prosecutor asked the judge to order her to stay away from any children “other than her own,” but Cohn got the request narrowed before it was approved by the judge, KTLA reported.

“We don’t have any objection to the teaching part of it, but there are family friends, relatives, things of that nature,” her attorney said.

Cohn previously told The Times that Hansen’s phone was hacked and that he reported it to police when she began getting reports from friends, neighbors and family of strange emails in January and February, long before the sex allegations arose.

“She actually went to the phone company twice, changed her phone twice,” he said. “She went to the school … people were receiving texts, emails and photographs from her that she states she did not send.”

A spokesman for the Riverside County district attorney’s office said Corona police did a thorough investigation, and there was no evidence Hansen’s phone was hacked.

Hansen was arrested in June after Corona police conducted an initial investigation. The probe was prompted by the Corona-Norco Unified School District, which reported a possible inappropriate relationship between Hansen and a former student. The district placed Hansen on leave.

Prosecutors could seek up to 13 years in prison if Hansen is convicted on all the charges.

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richard.winton@latimes.com

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