Editor's note: This story originally included a photographic collage that included an image of Catherine Armstrong Bell, a former assistant principal at Pelham High School. Bell's photo should not have been included with this story because previous charges against her were dismissed by a judge under an agreement signed by parties in the case. The case was dismissed with prejudice, meaning that Bell can't face charges for allegations concerning the same incident in the future. AL.com regrets wrongly associating Bell with this story.

School employees in Alabama were accused or convicted of sex crimes with students more frequently than in any other state on a per capita basis in 2014, according to records compiled by a former chief of staff of the U.S. Department of Education.

Terry Abbott, who in 2001 served as chief of staff under Secretary of Education Rod Paige during George W. Bush's first term as president, spent 2014 tracking every available report of teacher-student sex nationwide.



Abbott and his Houston-based PR firm, Drive West Communications, logged 781 such cases last year. 25 occurred in Alabama, Abbott said, and per capita, the Yellowhammer State had the highest rate of sexual relationships between educators and their students.



Abbott is quick to admit that his methodology isn't perfect. Because there is no federal law that uniformly legislates the legality of this issue, a relationship that's illegal in Alabama may not be in Montana, and one that's OK in Alabama may be a felony in Michigan.



Alabama Act 2010-497 makes it illegal for any school employee to have a sexual relationship with a student younger than 19. In Wyoming, as long as the student is 16 or older and consents to the relationship, it's not a crime. In Michigan, all such relationships are illegal, regardless of the student's age.



Abbott and other advocates have lobbied for more uniform laws and sentencing guidelines nationwide, but until such legislation is adopted, there's always going to be some disparity, he said.



"In some cases, educators are committing heinous crimes involving children throughout the country and getting very little, if any, real punishment for it. You turn around and find a similar case in another state and find the judicial system has thrown the book at the educator," Abbott said Tuesday. "In a state where it's not against the law for a teacher to have a relationship with a student of a certain age, obviously you wouldn't have as many of those cases reported because it's not a crime."



Another limitation of the methods Abbott and Drive West used to compile the data is that their efforts are unprecedented -- there's no uniform database or collection of these cases nationwide. Instead of using criminal or court records in all 50 states to collect the data, Abbot and his team relied on media reports, which they combed through in every state, every day of 2014.



Still, it's inevitable some cases slipped through the cracks. Abbott said his data shouldn't be read as the be-all, end-all report on sex between students and teachers in the U.S.



"This is not a scientific report," Abbott said. "Our data is only as good as the media sources we get it from."



Instead, Abbott said, he hopes the numbers will be used by educators and law makers to get an idea of the extent of the problem and its biggest trends.



Those trends don't look good in Alabama.



Twenty-five school employees were accused or convicted of sexual relationships with students in 2014. The Census Bureau estimated Alabama's population last year was around 4.85 million, which means one school employee per every 193,975 residents was accused or convicted of such a relationship last year. That's the highest rate in the country, Abbott said.



Kentucky, Louisiana, Vermont and Mississippi round out the rest of the nation's top five worst states for teacher-student sex, according to Abbott's data.



Overall numbers don't look much better. Texas led the nation by far in terms of the sheer number of cases recorded with 116 of the 781 accusations and convictions taking place in the Lone Star State. Alabama wasn't far behind, though, and took the No. 9 spot on that list.



"Alabama is the 23rd most populous state in the country, but was 9th in the most of these cases in 2014," Abbott said. "Not good news for schools, parents and students there."



Abbott was born in Alabama and spent 36 years here, first as a reporter, then in politics, as Governor Guy Hunt's press secretary, then as a campaign manager for several politicians, including U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions during his first campaign. He said he's not just pointing fingers at Alabama and other states -- he has a vested interest in seeing this problem addressed.



Two of Abbott's daughters still live in Alabama, and he said he expects at least some of his future grandchildren will be educated here. He also has a teenage son in a public school in Texas, so the prominence of both states in his data hits close to home for the former chief of staff.



"I want my grandchildren, one of these days, to be safe in Alabama's classrooms," Abbott said. "I think we have to be aware that, as many great teachers as there are in Alabama, we've seen that there are still sexual predators in our classrooms, preying on our children."



Some argue that if a student is of the age of consent and wants to have a relationship with an educator, that ought to be allowed, but Abbott said it is, in every case, a violation of a relationship he called sacred.



"Teachers have authority over children every day, so it's very important to protect that relationship, and any teacher who abuses that authority and takes advantage of a child in the classroom, that should be considered a serious crime," Abbott said. "I'm a parent, and we send our children to school every day to be educated. We don't send them there to be sexually assaulted. An educator's first and most important priority ought to be the safety of every child in that building."



For more of AL.com's continuing coverage on teacher-student sex scandals in Alabama, read Carol Robinson's coverage of high-profile cases statewide and her aggregation of thoughts from readers on the issue.