Police arrested a 30-year-old school lunch worker for literally having a closeted sexual affair with a senior at a San Antonio high school.
Jenna Michelle Woodworth was booked Thursday and accused of having sexual intercourse multiple times with the student in a closet in the school cafeteria’s kitchen.
Police charged Woodworth with an “improper relationship between an educator and a student, a second-degree felony,” ABC local affiliate KSAT reported.
School staff found a photo of the teen in Woodworth’s East Central High School work locker when they cleaned it out after she was fired shortly after her arrest.
Both Woodworth and the student were interviewed by police and admitted to the inappropriate relationship, police said. It remains unclear how police were tipped off to the illegal affair, which they began investigating earlier in the week.
KSAT also reported the affair was ongoing right up until the time police got involved:
During an interview, the victim stated that on Monday, Woodworth picked him up in the stadium parking lot in a district vehicle and drove him to the Learning Academy Campus, according to the affidavit. The student said Woodworth walked him through a back door of the cafeteria kitchen, and when she was done with her morning duties, “they went to a closet in the kitchen and had sexual intercourse,” the affidavit states. The student told officers the same interaction happened the following day.
The affidavit noted that after the sexual interlude Woodworth would wash her hands and return to her cafeteria duties. The district’s high school nutrition department had employed the worker since 2021.
The student also told police he had been in regular contact with Woodworth since his freshman year at East Central High School. He stated she “would get upset with me if I did not speak to her or acknowledge her when I was around her,” the affidavit added.
Like teachers who have had similar affairs with students, adult perpetrators exploit a student’s insecurities as they try to reach adulthood, Lori Whittmeyer — who works with a victims advocacy group called Search & Support San Antonio — told CBS affiliate KENS.
“Obviously this is a situation in which grooming had taken place over a series of years in which an adult took advantage of a minor for her purposes of her own gratification,” she said. “It all has to do with vulnerability and what is it that kids are looking for. Love and acceptance.”
Breitbart contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
