Rachel Hicks, Xbox Sex Predator

Rachel Ann Hicks, 36-year-old married mother from Orange County, California, has for allegedly having sex with a 13-year-old Maryland boy she met playing Xbox Live online.

The relationship between Rachel Ann Hicks, 36, and the boy progressed after their initial online encounter in September with phone calls, texts, e-mails and the exchange of sexually explicit photos and movies, police said.

Hicks told the boy she was 23 and flew to Maryland over the Thanksgiving holiday, according to the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

Soon after, the boy’s family discovered “romantic” text messages on his cellphone, prompting the boy to admit what had happened.

Hicks was arrested Friday at her Lake Forest home. She admitted to detectives that there was another minor who lived in California whom she was involved with. Investigators are trying to identify that boy.

38-year-old Shannon Ellis got pregnant by 14-year-old boy

Shannon Ellis, 38-year-old woman from Indianapolis, Indiana,has been sentenced to eight years in prison for engaging in sex with a 14-year-old boy.

The sexual relationship between the young boy and the adult woman occurred in 2007 and 2008 and were exposed after Ellis became pregnant. Ellis’husband had been vasectomized and the DNA test confirmed that the boy was the father of the girl born April 2008.

The sentence was less than the 15 years — 10 executed in prison — that prosecutors requested and far short of what the victim’s family wanted. The victim’s mother was very unhappy with the sentence, indicating that Ellis deserved more time for ruining her son’s life.

In issuing his sentence, Marion Superior Court Judge Grant Hawkins cited the testimony of Michael Johnson, a clinical psychologist who has begun counseling Ellis to help with her sexual and substance abuse issues. Johnson said he thinks there is less than a 5 percent chance that Ellis will commit another sexual offense. Her attorneys argued for no prison time, saying it would interfere with her counseling and rehabilitation.

Shannon Ellis, choking back sobs and dabbing tears from her eyes, offered a brief apology before Hawkins issued the sentence. “I just want to say I never wanted to hurt anybody in this family,” she said, “and I take full responsibility for what happened. . . . I’m so ashamed.”

Ellis was charged in January after police investigated a report that she had sex with the boy — a relative of her husband’s — on several occasions in 2007 and 2008. She had entered into a similar plea agreement with prosecutors in last June, but she backed out of the deal after media published a story about the case.