The Cincinnati Bengals cheerleader who carried out a sordid affair with one of her 17-year-old high school students is set to get her own reality TV show.
Sarah Jones, 27, has been accused of ‘cashing in on her crime’ after the creators of Jersey Shore, 495 Productions, reportedly approached the Kentucky woman about the program.
The show will center around Ms Jones and presumably Cody York, her much younger boyfriend, whom she recently admitted to having sex with when he was a minor, after vehemently denying it. It is scheduled to air on the cable channel Oxygen.
A source told RadarOnline.com that the sex scandal has turned into ‘one big payday’ for Ms Jones, who was getting rewarded for breaking the law.
Sarah Jones, former cheerleader for the Cincinnati Bengals, walked out of court hand-in-hand with Cody York recently.
‘A lot of people are going to be outraged I imagine when they find out she’s getting a show,’ the insider told the website. ‘She is basically being rewarded for breaking the law!
‘She’s totally cashing in on her crime, and I’m pretty sure that if it was a 27-year-old man that had pleaded guilty to having sex with his 17-year-old female student he wouldn’t have been given a TV show!’
Ms Jones opened up about her relationship with Mr York, now 18, in an exclusive interview with Dateline on NBC last week.
The source said: ‘This whole scandal has turned into one big payday for Sarah. She was boasting that she ‘made bank’ for her Dateline interview… and now she is going to be paid for appearing in her own reality TV show. It’s sick.’
Footage was released earlier this week showing the cheerleader resolutely denying having anything to do with her teenage lover while being interrogated about the sexual relationship with the student.
It came almost one year before she finally admitted in court that she did have an affair with him.
The video shows the woman walking into the Edgewood Police Department on November 29, 2011, with her mother Cheryl to answer questions about her relationship with Mr York.
She immediately goes on the defense and denies everything:’I mean I’ve had private investigators follow me for three years now, which is interesting, that’s why this is so crazy because if any skeletons were in my closet, from an $11 million lawsuit, they would’ve found it before now.’
When asked about how it was affecting her job, she said: ‘I had students come up to me and say that because the Internet said I was a slut, they would never be able to learn from me again, because of what the Internet said.’
When asked about sending text messages to the freshman, she again denies it and seems in shock when presented with evidence, as can be seen in the Fox 19 video.
She asks the officer: ‘Where did you get these?’ and is told they were subpoenaed.
Eleven months later, Jones said this in court:’This relationship began in February of 2011. Our romantic relationship included voluminous phone calls and text messages. I sent sexually explicit text messages to Cody York while he was a student.
‘I had sexual contact including sexual intercourse with Cody York in Kenton County Kentucky while he was a student and I was a teacher at Dixie Heights High School.
The former Dixie Heights High School English teacher spoke to Dateline last week with Cody, admitting what she did was wrong.
She also explains the reason why she felt the need to cover up the affair for so long, repeatedly lying in court, on TV, to the school, to police and to friends and family.
But she said she never pursued the teen.
‘It is wrong for a teacher to have any type of relationship that crosses the line with a student, there is no gray area,’ she said. ‘What I did was wrong. And I feel guilty as to what happened and that other people were hurt in this, in a sense from our families having to go through this.’
Now that the case is over, Mr York, has come out to speak about the love he has for his teacher and insists she did not manipulate him.
He said: ‘Absolutely not, she did not use her power of authority over me or manipulate me. I didn’t like being called the victim, because I wasn’t a victim. I wasn’t a victim of anything. She never did anything to me.
‘I don’t remember the exact moment of how it all began.
‘Every time I would see her outside of school, it would hit me harder and harder and harder every time and that’s just how it started.
‘He said keeping the relationship a secret was one of the hardest parts. ‘I wanted to tell my friends, this is my girlfriend.’
Ms Jones, 27, pleaded guilty on October 8 to having sex with the then-17-year-old as part of a plea deal and received five years probation.
She also admitted sending explicit text messages to him and lying to police.
She said: ‘The truth will set you free. The stress fell off of me when I didn’t have to hide anymore. He’s wonderful. Even if he does have flaws, I adore them. If you can love someone at their lowest, that says a lot.
‘He says to me, “Sarah, you look so beautiful in your mugshot” and that’s how I know he really loves me. We made a poor choice together but that doesn’t mean we can’t find happiness at the end of the day.
During the trial, Mr York refused to cooperate with the prosecution and he and his family often appeared in court to support Ms Jones.
Speaking about their fledgling relationship, he said: ‘I always looked at her as a very close friend. She was my support system. Outside of school, it just started coming along.
‘Yeah, [the affair] was worth it. I never in a million years thought [the arrest and trial] would ever happen.
‘But I love everything about her. She can break down in front of me, she can be her worst in front me and it makes me love her even more.’
Right after the guilty plea, Jones’ high school sweetheart and ex-husband called her a ‘conniving liar’ and ‘scum’ and said he believed the pair would soon marry.
Recently, a judge issued a restraining order preventing Nathan Wilburn from going anywhere near his ex-wife, after he admitted in Kenton Circuit Court that he threatened to break her neck.
The judge ordered Wilburn to stay 500 feet from Jones at home and at work.
‘Sarah Jones still thinks she is going to die by murder from (Wilburn),’ Jones’ attorney, Eric Deters, said after the hearing.
‘When I leaned over in the courtroom and said, “Sarah this is really, really good,” she said, “He is still going to kill me”. That is scary stuff.’
Mr Wilburn revealed to the MailOnline his ex-wife only told him two days before she appeared in court that she was going to admit the offense in a plea deal to keep her out of prison – and even then still insisted she was innocent.
‘This kid probably thought he had it all,’ he said. ‘He had a hot cheerleader girlfriend and she was also his teacher. Well, Sarah is none of those now and the attraction is going to wear of pretty quickly.
Nathan Wilburn said he had no idea his wife was cheating on him during his short-lived marriage but as one of the cheerleaders for the Cincinnati Bengals she had ample opportunity to be away from home.
‘I can’t say I feel sorry for him. He knew what he was getting into an its tough luck if it is not going to work out. Even though his parents seem to approve of the relationship it is not going to work.
‘There are rumors that they will get engaged. It will not last. She could not stay married to me and we were in love and together for almost ten years.
‘He has got no chance. The relationship is just doomed and when all the fuss dies down she will move on.’
Sitting at the kitchen table in the ranch-style home of his grandparents, who have brought him up since he was a baby, Mr Wilburn could barely keep a lid on the storm of anger, disbelief and humiliation that he said is tearing him apart inside.
Staring at a photo of their wedding day he said sarcastically: ‘That was supposed to be happiest day of our lives.’
The young man struggled to find the right words to describe the scale of the betrayal, often lapsing into silences.
‘She is a sexual predator and should have been locked up for what she did. Teachers do not have sex with their students,’ said Mr Wilburn, 26. ‘She was in a position of authority and abused it. She abused that boy.
‘If I were a teacher and had an affair with a teenage girl I would be looking at prison time. There is no justice there. It is just wrong.’
For Mr Wilburn, who had dated Ms Jones as his high school sweetheart before their marriage in July 2011, the confession hit him like a bolt out of the blue two days earlier in a phone call from Sarah.
He had just come home from work back to his modest home in Independence, Kentucky, he was tired, and was looking forward to spending the rest of the day relaxing.
‘Two days before the plea deal she called to tell me she was going to plead guilty. I was just stunned. I’d heard rumors but had refused to believe them because she had been so insistent.
‘Even then in the phone call Sarah kept on saying she did not do anything wrong. She told me she was innocent and doing it to protect her mom – but innocent people don’t plead guilty.’
It wasn’t the first time he had had a tearful phone call from Sarah protesting her innocence – and not the first time he was too willing to swallow her lies.
Mr Wilburn remembers vividly when he first found out that his wife was being investigated for having sex with the student, who she had been tutoring since 2008, in November 2011.
‘It was another phone call from Sarah. She was crying and saying it was all lies, that she didn’t sleep with one of her students. She made out that people who were jealous of her as a cheerleader with the Bengals were spreading the lies.
‘I really wanted to believe her. What husband wants to think their wife is going behind their back for sex with someone else? She just kept saying: “Nathan, it’s not true. They are all lies. They are just rumors”.’
And the lies continued and his belief in her did too, even when prosecutors said the sexual affair had began while she was still married.
‘We had been together since I was 14-years-old. She even swore under oath that I was the only man she had slept with,’ said Nathan. ‘I thought I knew the real Sarah, but obviously I didn’t.’
Although Mr Wilburn and his wife separated after just six weeks of marriage at the end of August last year, they remained close friends and spoke on the phone at least twice a week.
‘Then for her to turn round and admit sleeping with her student is like being kicked in the gut.
‘It just shows what a conniving liar she is.
‘The part that hurts the most is that her parents knew what was going on and they just covered up for her.
‘I think they are scum for what they have done. Her mother was a school principal. She knows teachers having sex with their students is wrong.’
The boy, now aged 18, had refused to co-operate with prosecutors and his lack of assistance was one of the reasons prosecutors agreed to plea deal.
The teen cannot be named as he was a minor when the sex acts occurred and considered a sex abuse victim.
Mr Wilburn said he has since heard Ms Jones and the teen could be planning to announce their engagement.
‘That would just be sick,’ he said.
‘What sort of message is that sending out to other kids,’ he said. ‘So it’s all right to have sex with your teacher and get away with it?’
‘Just looking at her face as she left the court you could see she was loving all the attention. She loved it.’
Mr Wilburn admits he has sought counseling and he has also buried himself in work at the logistics department of Toyota cars in nearby Erlanger.
While he has had to try and rebuild his life and endure the humiliating stares from the people in the small Kentucky town who know him as the husband of that sex scandal teacher, Sarah and her teen lover are believed to have negotiated a deal to tell their story on a national TV network.
Since being charged in March, Jones has been staying at her parents $700,000 luxury lakefront home set in over three acres of land a short distance from the High School where she first met Nathan.
The substantial property has its own swimming pool and overlooks a man made lake surrounded by woodland.
Nathan said he had no idea his wife was cheating on him during his short-lived marriage or even before.
He said as one of the cheerleaders for the Cincinnati Bengals NFL team she had ample opportunity to be away from home.
She has lied about this affair. Who knows if there were others?’ he said. ‘For all I know it could have been going on for many months. She had been tutoring this boy since 2008. No one knows when it all started.
‘She was always getting texts from other students. I thought they were from girls on the cheerleading squad, but given the thousands of texts prosecutors say they had many must have been from the boy.
‘I guess I was too trusting. What hurts most is the thought that in the weeks before our wedding she was involved with him.
‘I’ve got no proof when the affair began but Sarah has proved to be such a liar, I don’t know what to believe.’
Nathan had met his future wife when they were both students at Simon Kenton High School in Kentucky. He said they were friends for three years before dating seriously when he was 17, and Sarah, 18, in her senior year.
Like other teens they shared many happy memories from regular prom dances and dates going to the movies. While Sarah trained to be a teacher at Northern Kentucky University Nathan started work for Toyota.
In July 2010, he and Sarah flew to Disneyland in California where he got down on one knee and proposed.
Remembering the happy occasion Nathan said: ‘Sarah burst into tears and it was just such a special day. Her parents knew I was going to ask her to marry her, but she had no idea. I was with the woman of my dreams and we had such big plans together.’
By this time Sarah was teaching English at Dixie Heights High School.
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