Ann didn't know anything about her freshman history teacher's checkered past - his convictions for domestic violence and illegal gun sales - when she started hearing rumors about his relationships with female students.

"He kind of liked to dance around the classroom," she said. "My friends told me to have my boyfriend walk me to his class."

Ann, who did not use her real name for this story, said the teacher focused on the girls in the class, flirting and joking during school.

In December 2013, that teacher, 41-year-old Phillip Smith III, turned his attention to 14-year-old Ann, a freshman at Huffman High School in Birmingham. During a test, he pulled her desk close to his and addressed the class.

"He told everyone to keep their eyes on their paper," Ann said. "He said, 'If you look up, then I know you're cheating.'"

A few minutes later, he returned with a note written in red ink that he slid onto her desk.

"Since you think you got it like that, come to my class seventh block, and pull down your pants and let me kiss your ... it said the a-word" Ann recalled of the note. Smith offered to change her grade to an A or B.

Then he picked up the note, shredded it and tossed it in the trash can.

"I just kind of froze," Ann said.

As she left the classroom, Smith leaned toward her and whispered, "You scared," Ann said.

Ann panicked, and did not return later that day. Instead, she reported her teacher, who was ultimately caught sexually abusing another 14-year-old student and charged under Alabama's sodomy and teacher sex laws.

She would come to find out that it wasn't the first time Smith had gotten in trouble for dirty deals.

In 2002, Smith pled guilty to misdemeanor domestic violence and in 2004, he was convicted of dealing guns in a federal case investigated by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. At the time, he was teaching social studies at Wenonah High School.

Shockingly, a spokesman for Birmingham City Schools said the district never learned about his gun conviction, even though he took a seven-month leave of absence in 2006 and 2007 to serve his sentence in federal prison.

Between 2000 and 2004, Smith sold more than 100 guns without a license, and also kept several for himself, in violation of laws against gun ownership by those with domestic violence convictions, according to court documents. Authorities recovered several of Smith's black market guns from Detroit.

"There is no record of Birmingham City Schools being notified of Smith's federal charges while he was employed with the district," wrote district spokeswoman Chanda Temple in an email.

Even though district officials said they were never notified of the gun crimes, officials with the state agency in charge of teacher certification did know about it. Erica Pippins, a spokesman for the Alabama State Department of Education, said an independent source notified the agency in 2008. Employees there reviewed his record and cleared him to keep teaching, she said.

A lawsuit filed by Ann and her family alleges that Birmingham City Schools and the board of education failed to protect her from a teacher with a troubled history. The lawsuit also contends that Smith was running a sex-for-grades scheme inside his Huffman High classroom.

Her attorney, Julian Hendrix, said he struggled to understand how Smith remained in the classroom after serving time for federal gun charges.

"It's really about the safety of, not just young girls, but also young boys who could be exposed to this," he said.

In 2000, Smith began teaching social studies at Wenonah High School in the Birmingham City School District after he passed a criminal background check. In 2002, he was charged with misdemeanor domestic violence.

In a deposition, his victim, who is also the mother of Smith's child, said he confronted her outside her house. He yelled at her for leaving the child with other adults, and then followed her inside, where he continued to curse in front of the children. Smith finally cornered her and choked her, according to the statement.

Then he pushed her down hard enough to scrape her knee, and threatened to kill her as he left. An officer who responded to the scene confirmed the cuts on the victim's knee, according to a police report.

Smith obtained high marks in a court-ordered domestic violence intervention program completed as part of a deal that kept him out of prison.

Despite the allegations of violence in the domestic violence case, Smith obtained his teaching certificate in 2003, according to Erica Pippins of the the Alabama State Department of Education.

"The department had become aware through its background check process that Mr. Smith possessed a domestic violence conviction," she wrote in an email.

But the department decided to issue the license in spite of his criminal record.

Pippins said: "After obtaining additional information, the department determined that he had completed a domestic violence program pursuant to a plea deal. The department received no information to indicate that he had actually harmed anyone."

Like the school district, the department of education wasn't notified in 2004 when Smith pled guilty in the gun case. A scheme laid out in court documents portrays Smith as the middleman in a gun-dealing pipeline. He bought more than 100 guns from the Birmingham Pistol Parlor, then turned around and sold them to a man in Anniston known only as Bill for a profit of $200 per gun.

He pled guilty and served nine months in prison, according to court documents, starting at the end of the school year in May 2006. He requested a leave of absence from August 2006 to March 2007, according to Temple, but never mentioned his legal troubles.

State regulators learned about Smith's conviction in 2008, a year after he returned from prison.

"Subsequently, the Department received information regarding his firearms convictions, which appeared to be based on his having possession of a firearm while having a conviction for domestic violence," Pippins wrote in an email. "At that time, he was once again cleared in 2008 based on that information."

Smith's attorney in the teacher sex case declined to comment on his client's previous charges.

Michael Knight, special agent and public information officer for the ATF office in Nashville, said the agency doesn't inform employers about convictions.

"We can't regulate the employers," Knight said. "When we have a conviction of an individual, it goes on their criminal history, and that's it."

Teachers at public and private schools in Alabama are required to submit to pre-employment criminal checks, a change that came about after a 1994 Birmingham News investigation identified hundreds of school employees convicted of violent crimes.

Although pre-employment screens may keep some scofflaws out of the classroom, there's no system to keep checking records after a person has been hired, Knight said. So Smith's employers at the Birmingham City School District never knew about his gun conviction, even though the Alabama State Department of Education learned about it in 2008.

When Smith returned from his leave of absence and prison stint in 2007, he transferred from Wenonah High School to Huffman High, where he taught social studies and coached softball.

Smith's employment at Huffman High finally came to an end after administrators at the school began investigating Ann's complaints and discovered his abuse of other students. Although he was charged with sex offenses that carried possible penalties of 20 years in prison, Smith managed to avoid prison with a plea deal that also kept him off the sex-offender registry.

"I was very disappointed," said Ann's mother.

As part of his plea deal, Smith surrendered his teaching license in 2014. Ann and her mother aren't satisfied with a sentence they consider too lenient, and also want to know why a convicted felon was allowed to teach for 10 years, even after he went to jail.

Ann said she still suffers anxiety linked to Smith's advances. After she and her mother reported him to the principal, she stayed out of school for a couple weeks and asked to be transferred to another class. The principal granted the transfer - but put her in a new class right next door to Smith's, she said.

She transferred to a high school in Bessemer, and then back to Huffman for her junior year. Her mother spent a year driving from Center Point to Bessemer four times a day to send her daughter to a school where she felt safe. The ordeal strained the family and created lingering anxiety for Ann and other victims.

Even now, Ann struggles to engage in classes taught by men.

"Now if they give me work, I just do it and I just don't participate with the class," she said.

Ann's mother hopes the lawsuit will push the district to do more to protect students from sexual predators.

"I did all I can do for her last year," Ann's mother said. "It's about her pain and suffering. Because this bothered her, it really did. She talked to me about it a lot."

Hendrix also said the school she respond more quickly to get students out of unsafe situations.

"They didn't go outside of their comfort level to make sure she was going to be in a place that she felt safe in," Hendrix said.