Ramsey BethAnn Carpenter-Bearse (born December 15, 1990) is a registered sex offender, American

beauty pageant A beauty pageant is a competition that has traditionally focused on judging and ranking the physical attributes of the contestants. Pageants have now evolved to include inner beauty, with criteria covering judging of personality, intelligence, ...

titleholder, and former teacher. She was named

Miss Kentucky The Miss Kentucky competition is the pageant that selects the representative for the state of Kentucky in the Miss America pageant. Kentucky has once won the Miss America crown. Multiple Miss Kentucky titleholders have gone on to make themselv ...

2014 on July 12, 2014, and competed for the title of

Miss America Miss America is an annual competition that is open to women from the United States between the ages of 17 and 25. Originating in 1921 as a "bathing beauty revue", the contest is now judged on competitors' talent performances and interviews. As ...

2015, where she won the preliminary talent competition and placed in the Top 12 as a semi-finalist. Her platform issue was

multiple sclerosis Multiple (cerebral) sclerosis (MS), also known as encephalomyelitis disseminata or disseminated sclerosis, is the most common demyelinating disease, in which the insulating covers of nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord are damaged. This d ...

awareness. In July 2020, Carpenter-Bearse was sentenced to two years in prison for exchanging explicit photographs with a minor.

Education and music

Carpenter-Bearse is a graduate of

the University of Kentucky The University of Kentucky (UK, UKY, or U of K) is a public land-grant research university in Lexington, Kentucky. Founded in 1865 by John Bryan Bowman as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Kentucky, the university is one of the state's ...

with a

Bachelor of Arts degree Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...

in special education with a focus on learning and behavior disorders. An accomplished bluegrass

fiddle A fiddle is a bowed string musical instrument, most often a violin. It is a colloquial term for the violin, used by players in all genres, including classical music. Although in many cases violins and fiddles are essentially synonymous, th ...

player, she participated in musical competitions at festivals and other venues while in high school and college. Known as "the girl with the green fiddle", she began playing the instrument at age 15.

Career

Carpenter-Bearse was named

2014 on July 12, 2014. She competed for the title of

2015, where she won the preliminary talent competition and placed in the Top 12 as a semi-finalist. Her platform issue was

awareness. Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2010, she has served as a spokeswoman for the

National Multiple Sclerosis Society The National Multiple Sclerosis Society (NMSS) is a nonprofit organization that was founded in New York City as the Association for Advancement of Research on Multiple Sclerosis on March 11, 1946 by Sylvia Lawry. Ms. Lawry was a lawyer looking fo ...

. After her beauty competition career, Carpenter-Bearse began teaching science at Andrew Jackson Middle School in Cross Lanes,

West Virginia West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian, Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States.The Census Bureau and the Association of American Geographers classify West Virginia as part of the Southern United States while the Bur ...

. On December 7, 2018, Carpenter-Bearse was arrested for allegedly sending topless photos to a 15-year-old boy, a former student of hers in the Kanawha County School District. She was charged with four felony counts of distribution or display of obscene matter to minors. Carpenter-Bearse testified that the matter started when she tried to send a photo to her husband, but accidentally sent it to the teen, who thereafter asked for more photos and she was "afraid to not appease him." A year later, she pleaded guilty to one felony count of possession of material depicting minors in sexually explicit conduct. In July 2020, she was sentenced to two years imprisonment, ten years

supervised release Parole (also known as provisional release or supervised release) is a form of early release of a prison inmate where the prisoner agrees to abide by certain behavioral conditions, including checking-in with their designated parole officers, or ...

, and registering as a lifetime sex offender.

References

1991 births Living people American beauty pageant winners American bluegrass fiddlers Bluegrass musicians from Kentucky Country musicians from Kentucky Miss America 2015 delegates Miss America Preliminary Talent winners Miss Kentucky participants People from Hartford, Kentucky People from Owensboro, Kentucky People with multiple sclerosis University of Kentucky alumni Beauty pageant contestants with disabilities American people with disabilities Educators with disabilities American criminals {{Kentucky-stub