A former teacher who slit his throat in open court after being found guilty of s**ually assaulting a teenager has been sentenced to 46 years to life in prison.
Jeffrey Scott Jones, aged 56, remained composed as Orange County Superior Court Judge Steven Bromberg imposed the maximum penalty for his conviction on two felony counts of aggravated s**ual assault of a child and one count of continuous s**ual abuse.
Jones, a resident of Huntington Beach and former Advanced Placement English teacher at Libra Academy, a public high school in Huntington Park, continually s**ually assaulted the girl between 2012 and 2013.
The abuse, along with the subsequent investigation, led the girl’s family to reject her.
As a result, she lived in group homes and on the streets, battling heroin addiction.
However, Deputy District Attorney Heather Brown informed the judge that the victim has since turned her life around and graduated from high school.
In a statement read in court, the girl, who was not one of Jones’ students, expressed her anguish, saying, “You broke me and brought me down to feel worthless.
I was a little girl, and you took my innocence.
You are a pathetic excuse of a human.
Parents and kids trusted you to be a teacher, not a predator.”
During the trial, another girl testified that she, along with a third girl, both former students of Jones, were also s**ually assaulted by him.
Jones’ attorney, Ed Welbourn, highlighted that many former students had written letters to the court in support of Jones.
“It’s clear he had a positive impact on many people in the community,” Welbourn stated.
The judge acknowledged the well-intentioned nature of the letters but emphasized that those who wrote them did not witness the trial or hear the testimony regarding the s**ual abuse.
Despite the self-inflicted throat slashing incident that occurred immediately after the jury’s verdict was read on October 19, there were no visible signs of a wound on Jones’ neck during the sentencing.
He entered the courtroom without difficulty, unlike during a previous hearing in November when he arrived in a wheelchair, possibly due to the neck-stabbing incident.
Contact the writer: semery@ocregister.com
