A 48-year-old Los Gatos mother of four was acquitted today of two felony counts of unlawful sexual contact with a minor, but convicted on one count of molesting or annoying a child, a misdemeanor.
The jury was unable to reach a verdict on a third felony count.
“Honestly, I’m disappointed with the verdict,” Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney Timothy Moore told the San Jose Mercury News. “You work very hard on every case that goes to a jury, but you can’t always predict what will happen.”
Cole engaged in a six-month relationship with a 16-year-old friend of one of her sons. The teen, now 17, testified that the pair had sexual relations as many as 30 to 40 times, while Cole claimed their sexual encounters only occurred three or four times. Cole also testified that the teen sexually assaulted her, the Mercury News reports.
In addition to having intercourse with the teen, Cole’s relationship with the troubled boy also included more than 5,000 text messages and 800 phone calls between the two. The relationship ended when the boy’s parents learned of it and sent their son to a camp for troubled teens.
Cole was offered a plea deal last week in which she would have been sentenced to six months of home confinement and required to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet, but the offer was refused.
While Cole was not convicted of any felonies, the misdemeanor conviction could result in her having to register as a sex offender, according to the Mercury News.
Sara Cole’s arrest and subsequent trial were not the first occasions that brought her name into the news. In 2007, she was seriously injured in a car accident involving a drunk driver. She was lauded as a hero by the Los Gatos community and frequently spoke out on the dangers of drunken driving. The Mercury News reports that testimony regarding the accident was not allowed into evidence because it was not applicable to the case and could evoke juror sympathy.
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