2018 South Carolina Code of Laws
Title 16 - Crimes and Offenses
CHAPTER 3 - OFFENSES AGAINST THE PERSON
Section 16-3-755. Sexual battery with a student.
(A) For purposes of this section:
(1) "Aggravated coercion" means that the person affiliated with a public or private secondary school in an official capacity threatens to use force or violence of a high and aggravated nature to overcome the student, if the student reasonably believes that the person has the present ability to carry out the threat, or threatens to retaliate in the future by the infliction of physical harm, kidnapping, or extortion, under circumstances of aggravation, against the student.
(2) "Aggravated force" means that the person affiliated with a public or private secondary school in an official capacity uses physical force or physical violence of a high and aggravated nature to overcome the student or includes the threat of the use of a deadly weapon.
(3) "Person affiliated with a public or private secondary school in an official capacity" means an administrator, teacher, substitute teacher, teacher's assistant, student teacher, law enforcement officer, school bus driver, guidance counselor, or coach who is affiliated with a public or private secondary school but is not a student enrolled in the school.
(4) "Secondary school" means either a junior high school or a high school.
(5) "Sexual battery" means sexual intercourse, cunnilingus, fellatio, anal intercourse, or any intrusion, however slight, of any part of a person's body or of any object into the genital or anal openings of another person's body, except when such intrusion is accomplished for medically recognized treatment or diagnostic purposes.
(6) "Student" means a person who is enrolled in a school.
(B) If a person affiliated with a public or private secondary school in an official capacity engages in sexual battery with a student enrolled in the school who is sixteen or seventeen years of age, and aggravated coercion or aggravated force is not used to accomplish the sexual battery, the person affiliated with the public or private secondary school in an official capacity is guilty of a felony and, upon conviction, must be imprisoned for not more than five years.
(C) If a person affiliated with a public or private secondary school in an official capacity engages in sexual battery with a student enrolled in the school who is eighteen years of age or older, and aggravated coercion or aggravated force is not used to accomplish the sexual battery, the person affiliated with the public or private secondary school in an official capacity is guilty of a misdemeanor and, upon conviction, must be fined not more than five hundred dollars or imprisoned for thirty days, or both.
(D) If a person affiliated with a public or private secondary school in an official capacity has direct supervisory authority over a student enrolled in the school who is eighteen years of age or older, and the person affiliated with the public or private secondary school in an official capacity engages in sexual battery with the student, and aggravated coercion or aggravated force is not used to accomplish the sexual battery, the person affiliated with the public or private secondary school in an official capacity is guilty of a felony and, upon conviction, must be imprisoned for not more than five years.
(E) This section does not apply if the person affiliated with a public or private secondary school in an official capacity is lawfully married to the student at the time of the act.
HISTORY: 2010 Act No. 265, Section 1, eff June 24, 2010.
