Rogers to serve at least six more years-Becomes eligible for parole again in 2014

By Duane Sherrill

Pamela Rogers embraces her mother, Karen Rogers, following her hearing in Nashville last month.

Former Centertown teacher and beauty queen Pamela Rogers will spend the next six years of her life behind bars as her bid for parole has been denied, the parole board decreeing she will not be considered again for another six years.

Rogers, 30, was denied early release after three members of the state parole board voted in agreement with Rogers’ hearing officer who recommended the former physical education teacher not be granted parole.

Her hearing was held last month at the Tennessee Prison for Women in Nashville where Rogers has been an inmate for nearly two years.

Rogers is serving a 10-year sentence for having a sexual affair with a 13-year-old male Centertown student. Rogers originally served 198 days in the Warren County Jail for the offense back in 2005 before being released on probation. However, she violated the terms of her release by contacting the boy on the Internet through MySpace and then by sending him risqu?? videos of herself. The result was that her probation was revoked on her original eight-year sentence for sexual battery by an authority figure and an additional two years was added to her term for sending the indecent videos of herself to the minor.

The fact she twice violated the terms of her probation likely weighed heavily in the parole board’s decision to reject Rogers’ first attempt for parole. However, according to her hearing officer, the severity of the crime was what led to her being denied another chance at parole for six years. In many cases, parole hearings are granted every two years. In Rogers’ case, she was put off for the maximum time allowed, that being six years.

The denial means she will not come up for parole again until February 2014. However, according to Melissa McDonald of the Tennessee Department of Corrections, Rogers’ good time credits could actually make her eligible for flattening her sentence (serving her entire term) before her parole date arrives again.

‘It’s hard to know how they will calculate her time for good behavior so we don’t know if her next parole hearing will come before she’d be eligible for release for finishing her sentence,’ McDonald said, noting the six-year wait for her next parole hearing cannot be appealed.