The trial for a former Auburn Adventist Academy teacher charged with having sex with one of his female teenage students has been put on hold.

Prosecutors in February charged Scott Spies, 49, with one count of third-degree rape of a child and two counts of first-degree sexual misconduct with a minor. He was scheduled to appear in court on Monday.

Dan Donohoe, spokesman for the King County Prosecutor’s office, said Monday he didn’t know how long the hold would last or what the issues behind it were.

Spies, who had taught at the school since 2009, pleaded innocent March 3. If convicted on all three counts, he could be looking at five years in prison. The school fired him after he allegedly admitted the affair to the dean of women students.

Spies is free on $150,000 bail.

According to the Auburn police detective’s statement, Spies admitted to police during an interview at his apartment later that day that he had sex with the student. Asked how old she then was, he allegedly responded, “15 for one week, then she turned 16,” at which point he was arrested.

According to the detective’s statement, the girl later told Auburn police that she first met Spies in February of 2009. She told police that he became her mentor, helped her with her problems and spent time talking with her. According to the statement, she told police that by the end of the school year, she and Spies knew that they liked each other, and that led to a relationship she described as a “commitment.”

According to the statement, the girl said that she went home to Thailand during summer break, but that she and Spies communicated all summer long via e-mail. She said they first had sex in August at his home just before school started. She told police they had sex at his apartment but also twice in his school office.

According to the statement, she told police they both acknowledged to each other that what they were doing was wrong, but continued anyway. She estimated that they had 15 sexual encounters, and that the last had occurred on Feb. 14.

Spies graduated from the Auburn Adventist Academy in 1979 and has a masters of arts in teaching. Before teaching at the Academy, he taught eighth grade at nearby Buena Vista Elementary School from the fall of 2000 to the spring of 2008. Buena Vista is a Seventh Day Adventist school.