A former countywide “Teacher of the Year” pleaded guilty Wednesday to sex acts involving a 12-year-old student at the National City elementary school where she taught.
Jaqueline Ma, 35, is expected to be sentenced to 30 years to life in prison when she is due in Chula Vista Superior Court on May 9. Her change of plea comes about two months before her trial was scheduled to start.
Ma pleaded guilty to two counts of lewd acts with a child under age 14, with duress, and also admitted to a lewd act involving a second child under 14, Deputy District Attorney Drew Hart said. According to prior court testimony, both children had been students at Lincoln Acres Elementary School, where Ma was a teacher.
Ma also pleaded guilty to a count of possessing material containing a minor engaged in or simulating sexual conduct.
Her attorney, Patrick Griffin, said he and his client believe it was a “fair resolution” to the case, and that Ma had “accepted responsibility early on in this process.”
“She has done nothing but express genuine remorse from the beginning of this,” Griffin said.
Ma had taught fifth and sixth grades in the National School District since 2013. In August 2022, she was one of five teachers tapped as a San Diego County Teacher of the Year.
She was arrested seven months later. In March 2023, the parent of a 12-year-old boy reached out to National City police to report a suspected inappropriate relationship with their son.
Prosecutors alleged Ma had a months-long relationship with the child, sending him illicit photographs of herself and asking him to do the same.
At Ma’s preliminary hearing in December 2023, police Detective Colleen Stanich read aloud text messages and other communications in which Ma and the boy profess their love for each other.
In one message, the child wrote: “Sometimes I think you don’t understand that I am a kid still and this is my only real relationship,” according to testimony from Stanich.
The investigation into Ma revealed a second suspected victim — a boy who was 11 years old when prosecutors say she sent him sexually charged messages, according to testimony at her preliminary hearing.
At the end of that 2023 hearing, Superior Court Judge Maryann D’Addezio said she thought the evidence was “overwhelmingly clear that the defendant took advantage of two children.”
D’Addezio said Ma used her authority over one of the boys, in particular, to “coerce him into behavior that he wasn’t ready for, for a relationship that was beyond inappropriate, beyond wrong.”
By one measure, she had faced about 165 years to life in prison if convicted at trial on all counts.