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Teacher-turned-stripper Mary Beth Haglin claims student used 'elevated vocabulary' to seduce her

A teacher-turned stripper who was sacked from a school over a nearly year long affair with a 17-year-old says she is the victim after the student used an "elevated vocabulary" to seduce her.

Mary Beth Haglin, 24, was sacked from a substitute teaching job at Washington High School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, after the school became aware she had been having regular sex with the teenage boy.

While the school did not report the affair to police a concerned member of the public called police, who initiated and intervention.

Haglin, who now works as a stripper called "Bambi", claims that rather than being a predator she was in fact the target of the boy's seduction.

“Many people see him as the victim and me as the perpetrator,” Haglin told the Dr Phil show. “[But] From a psychological standpoint and from every other standpoint, I feel like I am the victim.”

She claims the boy sent her texts and notes "with such intelligence and such an elevated vocabulary that I was completely duped by the whole facade”.

“One night after a particularly bad night with my boyfriend, we had gotten into a big fight, and the next day I looked at his message and thought, ‘I’m just going to respond’,” Haglin said.

Her responses eventually included explicit pictures of herself and the pair initiated a nine-month relationship soon afterwards.

But the show's host, Phil McGraw, said Haglin was "dumber than a box of rocks" for "sharing naked pictures with a 17-year-old boy".

Mary Beth Haglin, 24, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, says school authorites could have stopped her sexual relationship with a teenager boy. Photo: Facebook
Mary Beth Haglin, 24, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, says school authorites could have stopped her sexual relationship with a teenager boy. Photo: Facebook

At the time the affair was discovered Haglin blamed the school's officials for not stopping the relationship sooner with the 24-year-old substitute teacher claiming the school had known of the affair for months without taking action.

“These people all knew what was going on, but they turned a blind eye because they wanted to protect their school and didn't want it to get into the limelight,” Haglin said at the time. "They allowed this to happen. They knew in February."

Despite the school finally sacking Haglin on May 17, she maintained access to SubCentral, a directory site for substitute teachers that allowed her to continue finding work at other schools.


She blamed past abuses in her life for the affair and said the school shared some of the blame for putting her in an environment that “didn't help to curb anything”.

According to Haglin, she should have been banned from the substitute teaching service but the school wanted to keep the scandal secret.

“They didn’t ban me,” she told newspaper.

Mary Beth Haglin. Photo: Facebook
Mary Beth Haglin. Photo: Facebook

“They never actually said they were banning me from school grounds, they never said they were banning me from working at any other school, they never said they were banning me from thus-and-so many feet of any school."

After she was stopped from working at Washington High School, Raglin went on to teach at more schools, Harrison Elementary, Oak Ridge and Prairie Creek Intermediate until June 2.

She handed herself in to local sheriffs on July 23, and has since said she regretted the affair with the boy.

Haglin has pleaded not guilty to misdemeanour charges of sexual exploitation by a school employee. The trial is set to begin on November 14.