A former Alpena Public Schools special education teacher who is accused of repeatedly having sex with one of her students has been ordered to stand trial after a three-day preliminary examination, according to the Alpena News.

Heather Winfield, 38, who taught at Thunder Bay Junior High, is charged with two counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct with a child younger than 13 years old and individual counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct during the commission of a felony, third-degree criminal sexual conduct with a child aged 13 to 15 years old, second-degree criminal sexual conduct with a child younger than 13 years old, accosting a minor for immoral purposes, and using a computer to commit a crime.

If convicted, Winfield could face life in prison.

On Friday, witnesses and law enforcement took to the stand, including the now 14-year-old student, the newspaper reported. He testified the relationship started when he was 11, and that he and Winfield had sex more than 100 times in several hotel rooms in Alpena.

The defense told Judge Thomas LaCross that the case should be thrown out due to the low amount of physical evidence and the boy's lack of credibility. The teenager claimed he and Winfield had had sex with other people around and had told police that they had intercourse "maybe 1,000 times," but later changed it 100.

Winfield's case is one in a string of cases in Michigan and across the nation where a teacher was accused of engaging in sexual acts with a student.

In January, a former Rochester teacher was charged with six counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct in January. Kathryn Houghtaling, a 26-year-old special education teacher at Rochester High School, was accused of engaging in sexual acts with two underage students.

And in Arizona, a 28-year-old elementary school teacher is accused of having sex with her 13-year-old student, including in the classroom in front of another male student.

Brittany Zamora, a teacher at Las Brisas Academy elementary school in Goodyear, Arizona, was arrested in March 2018 on suspicion of sexual misconduct after a monitoring app on the boy's cellphone alerted his parents to illicit texts between the two.

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