MODESTO – It's over, says Jordan Powers, the 18-year-old who dropped out of high school to move in with her former teacher.
James Hooker, 41, was arrested by Modesto police Friday on charges of sexually assaulting a different teenage girl 14 years ago.
"He called me from jail and, yes, I told him that we're done," Powers told "ABC News" on Saturday morning. "I lost everything for this guy. I lost my senior year. I gave up all my friends at high school because they didn't agree with me."
Hooker posted $50,000 bail about 5 a.m. Saturday and was released from the Stanislaus County Jail, sheriff's officials said. He avoided reporters who spotted him riding a bicycle in a park and in his apartment complex.
Until February, Powers was a student at Enochs High School and Hooker was a business teacher and adviser to several campus clubs. The former couple has said their student-teacher relationship became romantic last fall, after Powers turned 18.
The Modesto City Schools District suspended Hooker on Feb. 3 during an initial investigation.
He left his wife and three daughters two weeks later and moved into an apartment in Modesto. He moved Powers out of her mother's house and into the apartment days later. He resigned his teaching position the same day and remains unemployed.
Police said they have developed evidence that Hooker was involved with a then-17-year-old girl in 1998 while he was a teacher at Davis High School in Modesto.
"He told me that he met her online and he hung out with her just as friends, and then he went to her house and she came out of the bathroom naked and he only touched her boobs and her legs," Jordan Powers told ABC. "He was freaked out so he left and went home. He said nothing else happened, but all of that was a lie."
© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.
What You Should Know About Comments on Sacbee.com
Sacbee.com is happy to provide a forum for reader interaction, discussion, feedback and reaction to our stories. However, we reserve the right to delete inappropriate comments or ban users who can't play nice. (See our full terms of service here.)
Here are some rules of the road:
• Keep your comments civil. Don't insult one another or the subjects of our articles. If you think a comment violates our guidelines click the "Report Abuse" link to notify the moderators. Responding to the comment will only encourage bad behavior.
• Don't use profanities, vulgarities or hate speech. This is a general interest news site. Sometimes, there are children present. Don't say anything in a way you wouldn't want your own child to hear.
• Do not attack other users; focus your comments on issues, not individuals.
• Stay on topic. Only post comments relevant to the article at hand.
• Do not copy and paste outside material into the comment box.
• Don't repeat the same comment over and over. We heard you the first time.
• Do not use the commenting system for advertising. That's spam and it isn't allowed.
• Don't use all capital letters. That's akin to yelling and not appreciated by the audience.
• Don't flag other users' comments just because you don't agree with their point of view. Please only flag comments that violate these guidelines.
You should also know that The Sacramento Bee does not screen comments before they are posted. You are more likely to see inappropriate comments before our staff does, so we ask that you click the "Report Abuse" link to submit those comments for moderator review. You also may notify us via email at feedback@sacbee.com. Note the headline on which the comment is made and tell us the profile name of the user who made the comment. Remember, comment moderation is subjective. You may find some material objectionable that we won't and vice versa.
If you submit a comment, the user name of your account will appear along with it. Users cannot remove their own comments once they have submitted them.
Order Reprint
About Comments
Reader comments on Sacbee.com are the opinions of the writer, not The Sacramento Bee. If you see an objectionable comment, click the "Report Abuse" link below it. We will delete comments containing inappropriate links, obscenities, hate speech, and personal attacks. Flagrant or repeat violators will be banned. See more about comments here.