Former Montgomery County elementary school teacher John Vigna, whose earlier convictions of fondling several students were vacated, pleaded guilty in the case Friday as part of an agreement designed to keep the 57-year-old from returning to prison.

The agreement — which comes after Vigna spent years denying abuse allegations filed against him — also calls on prosecutors to drop new charges filed against him involving another purported victim.

The development is the latest in the high-profile, winding case that first surfaced in 2016 when police charged Vigna — a longtime and popular teacher at Cloverly Elementary School — with sexual abuse involving five victims.

That led to a 2017 trial in which he was convicted on counts related to four of the victims and was later sentenced to 48 years in prison. Vigna retained new lawyers, who argued in court filings and hearings that Vigna’s original attorney performed so poorly at the trial that the convictions should be vacated.

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Montgomery Circuit Judge David Lease agreed, issuing a 46-page ruling last year that tossed the convictions, allowing Vigna to be released from prison pending a new trial or other developments in the case.

Vigna on Friday pleaded guilty to four counts sexual abuse of a child or minor.

By avoiding a new trial, prosecutors said, the victims are spared of having to testify again in open court. Prosecutors said they supported the plea agreement.

“This is an appropriate resolution given all of the challenges that would arise should the case go to trial,” Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy said in a statement. “The defendant’s admission of guilt following nearly a decade of denial is vindication for the victims and the community.”

Vigna’s attorneys, Steve Mercer and Isabelle Raquin, declined to comment.

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Vigna is due back in court on May 7, when attorneys will argue remaining parts of his sentencing.

Each count he pleaded to carries a penalty of up to 25 years. But the agreement Friday calls for his original sentence of 48 years to be replaced with a six-year sentence in which he will receive credit for the six years he’s already served behind bars. He will spend the next five years on probation, which means if he violates certain terms and conditions imposed by the court, he could be sent back to prison.

How much time he would be subject to receiving if he violates probation — known as backup time — will be debated in May. Prosecutors said Friday they would seek about 23 years of potential backup time.

Vigna’s attorneys earlier said he had no plans to return to teaching. His name will have to remain on Maryland’s online sex-offender registry for the rest of his life, according to the plea agreement.

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In court on Friday, prosecutors recited what they would have shown had the case gone to trial again.

In 2001 and 2002, prosecutors said, a fourth-grader would frequently sit on his lap at the end of the day before the school bus arrived. “One day, while sitting on his lap, she felt his hand” move and fondle her, prosecutors said. “He asked [her] to give him a kiss on the cheek every day before leaving for the bus,” prosecutors said. “He also once asked her to change in his closet in his classroom with the door slightly open.”

In 2008 and 2013, Vigna “was formally reprimanded by the school for allowing children to sit on his lap while acting as a teacher, and having inappropriate physical contact with them,” prosecutors said. “He signed a declaration in 2013 stating that he will ‘make every effort not to have any physical contact with his students.’”

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Regarding another victim, prosecutors said, she would sit on his lap and “on several occasions he would place his hands on his lap with his palms upward and make contact with her buttocks.” If she tried to leave, prosecutors said, Vigna would pull her back.

Two other victims said Vigna touched them inappropriately, with one saying it happened at his desk and sometimes at a back table, according to prosecutors.

Last year, when the judge vacated the verdict from Vigna’s original trial, the judge stated that better lawyering could have helped him.

“The evidence of Mr. Vigna’s guilt was not overwhelming, and he was acquitted of some counts,” Lease wrote. “There was no physical evidence presented, and the case turned on the credibility of the witnesses, including Mr. Vigna, who testified.”

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