A New Jersey middle school teacher is accused of grooming at boy beginning at age 12 and then having sex with him at least six times — but her lawyer claimed Wednesday that the victim was complicit because he sent her raunchy text messages.
“He’s not texting like a kid…his texts are as graphic and direct as any I’ve seen from an adult,” defense attorney Rocco Cipparone said.
“I’m not saying he’s not the age he is, but this is not a babe in the woods scenario that Ms. Finley is creating from a risk and a danger perspective.”
“The state’s evidence leaves something to be desired, it’s contextual, selective, salacious texts that will be challenged,” he added.
Ashley Fisler, 36, exchanged some 7,500 text messages with the boy, during her six-year sexual pursuit of him, prosecutors said during an hour-long virtual hearing.
Fisler — a married former social studies teacher at Orchard Valley Middle School in Washington Township — is accused of having sex with with boy when he turned 16, including in a classroom and her car.
She allegedly groomed the boy, starting at age 12, and exchanged disturbing messages with him over a six-year-period — including ones in which she offered to buy him a sex toy and shave his pubic hair, Gloucester county prosecutor Kylie Finley alleged Wednesday.
In other texts, she allegedly asked the boy to describe the sex he had with girls his age, recommended steamy movies to him and requested that he send her photos of himself, Finley claimed.
The teenager “tried multiple times to break off the relationship” but Fisler allegedly continued trying to control him.
“You stripped me of my innocence,” the teen eventually said in a heartbreaking message.
Cipparone, however, accused Finley of cherry-picking messages and taking them out of context to make them look worse than they were.
He claimed there was no evidence that his client ever sexually assaulted the boy as a preteen.
Fisler appeared from Salem County Jail by video during the hearing, wearing dark green jail scrubs and only speaking to confirm her name.
Judge William Ziegler on Wednsday signed a restraining order barring Fisler from having any contact with the victim.
She remains behind bars while the judge decides whether she can be released on bail.