Teachers Gone Wild
Posted By: Professor
on 12/14/2005 10:53:33 AM in CULTURE
--U.S. Teacher Sexpidemic Spreading Across Planet--
BadBadTeacher.com
"The seeming U.S. epidemic of cases involving female teachers raping or molesting their students has been "sexported" Down Under, as Australia is experiencing a similar rash of cases.
Bridget Mary Nolan, 24, of Adelaide, Australia, is facing a possible seven-year prison term after admitting to three counts of sexual intercourse with a 15-year-old student in late July.
"The victim ... and his family are the subject of a lot of scrutiny by members of the school community and (the) town community in which they live," prosecutor Elizabeth Griffith told a court hearing. "The victim has ... been teased and bullied and pointed out within the school community as somebody who might have been involved with the teacher."
Meanwhile, another woman teacher is facing charges for allegedly seducing one of her own 15-year-old students.
Natalina D'Addario, a 36-year-old languages instructor from the Melbourne area is accused of beginning a sexual relationship with the teen in May.
Police say they engaged in oral sex on six occasions through July off school grounds. The affair reportedly came to a close in September when the boy notified his assistant principal of the liaisons.
These two cases are the latest in a series of Australian women having illicit relations with their male students.
According to the Australian, Cindy Leanne Howell, a female teacher's aide, was sentenced last month to at least two and a half years for preying on a 15-year-old boy; Sarah Jayne Vercoe was sentenced to four years for a series of sex offenses against five boys in Tasmania; and Karen Ellis of Victoria was jailed in May after pleading guilty to six charges of sexual penetration of a child under 16.
The Australian cases are hauntingly reminiscent of a flood of cases reported in the United States and elsewhere.
Among the most well-known is the case of Debra Lafave, a 26-year-old reading teacher in Florida accused of having sex with a 14-year-old boy in her classroom, car and at home. Her plea deal sparing her jail time and giving her just house arrest was thrown out last week and her trial is now slated for April 10.
Some of the cases involving women have been collected by WND, including:
Adrianne Hockett: Accused of having sex with a 16-year-old special-needs student in a Houston apartment she rented for the get-togethers. The boy has testified the pair would "have sex, drink beer and smoke weed."
Amber Jennings, 31: Though Jennings was initially charged with having sex with a 16-year-old, the counts against the Sturbridge, Mass., woman were reduced to a single charge of disseminating harmful materials to a minor. She reportedly admitted e-mailing naked photos of herself to a former student.
Amber Marshall, 23: Northwest Indiana woman allegedly had sexual contact, including intercourse, with several students at Hebron High School, and turned herself into authorities, telling police she knew what she did was illegal.
Amira Sa'Si, 30: Clayton County, Ga., woman remarked she didn't think her relationship was inappropriate based on her Internet research, learning the Peach State's age of consent is 16.
Amy Gail Lilley, 36: Inverness, Fla., woman and softball coach at Lecanto High School charged with a lesbian relationship with a 15-year-old girl. She received no prison time, being sentenced to two years of house arrest and eight more years of probation.
Angela Comer, 26: Middle-school teacher from Tompkinsville, Ky., fled with her alleged lover, her 14-year-old male student, before being tracked down in Mexico where she reportedly planned to marry the boy. She was indicted for illegal sex acts with a minor and returned to Kentucky. Charges include felony custodial interference, two counts of third-degree sodomy and four counts of unlawful transaction with a minor relating to sexual acts.
Comer spins different tale (7/14/07)
Angela Stellwag, 24: Delran, N.J., woman accused of having sex in her apartment with a 14-year-old boy she met in school. She was charged with sexual assault for activity that allegedly took place in August 2004.
Beth Raymond, 31: Private-school employee from Pownal, Maine, charged with risk of injury to a minor and second-degree sexual assault of a juvenile male at Eagle Hill School in Greenwich, Conn.
Bethany Sherrill, 24: Daughter-in-law of school-board president charged with molesting a 15-year-old middle-school student. Reports state Sherill allegedly had oral sex with the boy and sent him coded text messages. She resigned her position at Jefferson Elementary School in Farmington, Mo.
Cameo Patch, 29: Substitute teacher at Tooele High School in Tooele, Utah, arrested for allegedly performing oral sex on a 17-year-old male student. The sexual activity was allegedly consensual, and reportedly took place off school grounds after the pair had exchanged phone numbers in a restaurant.
Carol Flannigan, 50: Boca Raton, Fla., music teacher reportedly slept with 11-year-old former student, and also had a simultaneous sexual relationship with the boy's father. In a deposition, the boy's father said he had the same sort of sexual relationship with Flannigan that ex-President Bill Clinton had with Monica Lewinsky. In February 2006, Flannigan was sentenced to five years prison as part of a plea deal.
Cathy Heminghaus, 46: Special-education teacher from Ferguson, Mo., charged with statutory sodomy involving at least three of her students at Ferguson Middle School. She reportedly told friends she had performed oral sex on the children on several occasions.
Celeste Emerick, 32: Police in Huber Heights, Ohio, say the Wayne High School teacher hosted a party where students were shown pornography. Prosecutors charged her with one count of sexual battery, a felony in Ohio.
Christina Gallagher, 26: Jersey City, N.J., woman ordered to pay more than $1,000 in fines, sentenced to a lifetime registration as a convicted sex offender and ordered to attend therapy for having sex with a 17-year-old student in late 2004. The former Rahway High School instructor was banned from teaching and seeing the student with whom she had sex.
Christine Duda, 39: Teacher at the Normandy Alternative School in St. Louis County, Mo., allegedly took a 16-year-old male student to her home for sex in December 2005. She was charged with two counts of felony statutory rape and fired by the school district.
Christine Scarlett, 36: English teacher at Strongsville High School in Ohio began a sexual relationship with the 17-year-old captain of the football team, Steven Bradigan, in November 2002 and eventually gave birth to Bradigan's son. Scarlett was fired from her teaching job, but insists nothing improper happened during the time she was Bradigan's teacher. She was never charged with any criminal wrongdoing.
Deanna Bobo, 37: Special-education teacher at Raymond E. Wells Junior High School in Greenwood, Ark., allegedly had sex twice with a 14-year-old boy in his own bed while his parents were not home. She has denied the charge, and has since been charged with assaulting a second boy.
Diane DeMartini-Scully, 45: Mattituck, N.Y., woman was the school psychologist at East Hampton Middle School on Long Island when she was accused of having sex with the 16-year-old boyfriend of her own 13-year-old daughter. She allegedly had intercourse and oral sex with the boy on a number of occasions in May 2005 in her home and car. She was arrested after allegedly secretly visiting her young paramour at his new home in North Carolina.
Donna Carr Galloway, 33: Married mother of two found naked in a car with a 17-year-old student.
Elisa Kawasaki, 25: Biology teacher from Fresno, Calif., area, pleaded no contest to sex with a teen boy, and prosecutors dropped four other counts.
Elizabeth Miklosovic, 36: Grand Rapids, Mich., teacher at South Haven's Baseline Middle School pleaded no contest to sexually assaulting a 14-year-old female student she "married" in a pagan ritual in June 2004. Miklosovic is also accused of touching the girl's genitals while camping in public parks.
Elizabeth Stow, 26: Tulare Western High School teacher from Fresno, Calif., area convicted of having sex with three of her students was sentenced to nine years, but the judge suspended that sentence and gave her one year, followed by five years of probation. She was also ordered to register as a sex offender.
Ellen Garfield, 43: Former student at Solomon Schecter School in Newton, Mass., said his music teacher took him into an empty classroom where she worked, partially disrobed, and coaxed him into having sex with her in 1998. Garfield was acquitted of all charges in September 2005.
Emily Morris, 28: Teacher at Leeds High School in St. Clair County, Ala., faced a possible 20-year sentence, but received one year in jail for having consensual sex with a 15-year-old student.
Erica Rutters, 29: Teacher at Oxford Christian Academy in New Oxford, Pa., allegedly wrote erotic messages to a 16-year-old student and had sexual intercourse with him four times in her apartment.
Georgianne Harrell, 24: Teacher at Holley Elementary School in Sylvester, Ga., charged with performing oral sex on a 9-year-old boy, allowing students to gaze down her blouse and slashing her wrists with glass in front of her students. She pleaded not guilty.
Gwen Ann Cardozo, 33: Teacher at Wasson High School in Colorado Springs, Colo., accused of having sex with a 17-year-old male student. Police charged her with sexual assault on a child by one in a position of trust, and Cardozo resigned her position in March 2005.
Heather Ingram, 30: Mathematics, science and business teacher at Chatelech Secondary School in Sechelt, British Columbia, had sex with a 17-year-old student. The relationship cost Ingram her job and reportedly led to the breakup of her 12-year common-law marriage to a man four years her senior.
Jacquelyn Faith Garrison, 19: Substitute teacher at South Central High School in Winterville, N.C., was indicted in January 2006 on charges she was having an improper relationship with a 15-year-old student. The case involves some 50 phone calls and text messages exchanged between Garrison and the boy, who reportedly became uncomfortable when things of a sexual nature came up.
Janelle Marie Bird, 24: Accused of having a two-year affair with a 15-year-old student from East Hill Christian School, in Pensacola, Fla. She was charged with two counts of lewd and lascivious battery and two counts of unlawful sexual activity with a minor.
Jaymee Wallace, 28: Basketball coach in Tampa, Fla., charged with having an 18-month lesbian relationship with a student. Authorities say the student, who was 15 when she met Wallace, voluntarily had sex with the coach more than 50 times, in a parking lot at Busch Gardens and often at Wallace's own apartment while a fellow classmate was in an adjacent room. According to the police report, the sexual relationship reportedly began in early 2003, after the student received a note from Wallace saying she "found her attractive and wanted to know if she felt the same way."
Joan Marie Sladky, 28: Redwood City, Calif., woman sentenced to six months in county jail for having sex with a 16-year-old student after pleading no contest to four counts of unlawful sexual intercourse, oral copulation and penetration with a foreign object. The Spanish teacher's relationship with the boy spanned six months, as she reportedly had sex with him once at his home and three times at her residence, which was on the property of the private Baptist church and school where she taught.
Katherine Tew, 30: Married English teacher from Greenville, N.C., arrested for having sex with a 17-year-old boy. She taught at South Central High School in Winterville, N.C., and was convicted of taking indecent liberties with a child, but found not guilty of the more serious sex charge. She was not given prison time, and lost her teaching license for at least two years.
Kathy White, 39: Teacher at Lumberton High School in Lumberton, Texas, charged with having sex with a 17-year-old student. The victim, Michael Ferguson, alleges: "She just started grabbing me and hormones were on and it just happened." Ferguson provided KBTV-TV with an e-mail allegedly sent by White, in which the teacher told him, "I get these cravings for YOU and that's not NORMAL! If I had it my way, I'd do you once a week just because it's good."
Kelly Lynn Dalecki, 28: Elementary-school teacher from St. Augustine, Fla., pleaded no contest to charges she had sex with a 13-year-old boy. The boy's parents reportedly found more than 50 sexually explicit e-mails and pornographic pictures allegedly sent by Dalecki on his computer.
Kristi Dance Oakes, 32: Teacher allegedly had sex with a 16-year-old boy who was in her biology class the previous year. Oakes resigned from her post at Seymour High School in Sevierville, Tenn., and reportedly lost her home and even the job she took at a grocery store after resigning from the school system because of the charges.
Lakina Stutts, 40: School-bus driver admitted to cops she had sex with a 14-year-old student in her home and in a car outside the boy's home.
Laura-Anne Brownlee, 26: Former music mistress at a top private school in Belfast, N. Ireland, was sentenced on six charges of indecently assaulting a 15-year-old boy.
Laura Lynn Findlay, 30: Band teacher at Ricker Middle School in Buena Vista Township, Mich., charged with having sex with at least 5 students, one as young as 14.
Lynn Saunders, 38: A former basketball star at the College of Staten Island, the gym teacher at St. Paul's School in New Brighton, N.Y., was arrested in March 2005 for allegedly molesting a 12-year-old girl whose family she had befriended. Saunders admitted to touching the girl's breasts and genital area on several dates in February 2005. She received no jail time, only probation and registration as a sex offender. The family is now suing Saunders and the Archdiocese of New York, claiming the girl became suicidal and still suffers from "severe emotional shock, trauma, embarrassment, anxiety and other psychological injuries."
Margaret De Barraicua, 30: Sacramento, Calif., area woman arrested after police found her having sex with a 16-year-old male student in her car while the woman's toddler was strapped into a seat in the back. She pleaded guilty to four felony counts of statutory rape and was sentenced a year in jail and five years formal probation.
Maria Saco, 28: Math teacher at Lincoln Middle School in Passaic, N.J., sentenced in 2005 to a year in jail for an intimate relationship with a teen student who was 14 when they first met. Saco reportedly gave the boy a key to her apartment.
Mary Kay Letourneau, 34: Des Moines, Wash., teacher did prison time after having sex with a sixth-grade student, Vili Fualaau, in 1996 and eventually had two children by him. She originally had Fualaau, in her second-grade class at Shorewood Elementary School in Burien, Wash. The couple has since married.
Melissa Michelle Deel, 32: Bristol, Tenn., teacher at Virginia Middle School pleaded guilty to crossing the state line into Virginia to have oral sex with a 13-year-old male student. As part of her plea agreement, Deel agreed never to profit from the crime, as well as have no contact with the boy and his family without court permission.
Michelle Kush, 29: Substitute teacher at Boone County High School in Florence, Ky., allegedly had sex with a 15-year-old boy several times during summer break. She was charged with two counts of rape and one sodomy count.
Nicola Prentice, 22: British woman from Sheffield, England, given a 12-month suspended jail sentence after she seduced a 16-year-old student and began a 19-month affair.
Nicole Andrea Barnhart, 35: Highlands Ranch, Colo., woman reportedly told police she loves the 16-year-old boy with whom she was having sex. A teacher at Ponderosa High School, she pleaded guilty to felony sexual assault on a child, resulting in a two-year prison sentence and a minimum of 10 years in a sex-offender probation program.
Nicole Long, 29: English teacher at Ayersville High School in Ohio resigned her teaching post after being accused of raping a 17-year-old boy. She pleaded guilty in January 2005 to a charge of sexual battery, and was sentenced in March to three months in jail.
Nicole Pomerleau, 31: English teacher at Olympic High School in Charlotte, N.C., arrested in March 2004 for allegedly having a sexual relationship with her 16-year-old student. The age of consent in North Carolina is 16, but teachers having sex with students is an exception to the law.
Pamela Smart, 22: Media-services director at Winnacunnet High School in Hampton, N.H., had convinced her 15-year-old lover to murder her husband. She was arrested in 1993. The Nicole Kidman film "To Die For" is based on her story.
Pamela Turner, 27: Former model and beauty-pageant contestant also taught at Centertown Elementary School in McMinnville, Tenn. She was arrested in February 2005 for allegedly having a three-month sexual relationship with a 13-year-old boy. She resigned her teaching position and was charged with 15 counts of sexual battery and 13 counts of statutory rape.
Rachelle Vantucci, 32: Ex-substitute teacher from Geneseo, N.Y., admitted having sex with a 16-year-old boy she met at a local riding stable. After pleading guilty, Vantucci agreed to surrender her teaching license and register as a sex offender.
Rebecca Boicelli, 33: Redwood City, Calif., woman gave birth to a baby last year and DNA test results gave prosecutors enough evidence to prove the father is Boicelli's former student, who was 16 at the time of conception.
Rhianna Ellis, 24: Social-studies teacher at the High School for Health Professions and Human Services in Manhattan, N.Y., allegedly began a 10-month sexual relationship with an 17-year-old player on the school's basketball team, and reportedly gave birth to his baby. The teen boy even introduced Ellis to his parents, never indicating she was his teacher.
Robin Gialanella, 26: Teacher at Silver Bay Elementary School in Toms River, N.J., engaged in kissing, and inappropriate conduct and conversations with two sixth-grade boys, ages 11 and 12, in 2003 and 2004. She was sentenced to 364 days in jail with psychotherapy, must register as a sex offender, will be under lifetime supervision and must surrender her New Jersey teaching certificate.
Robin Winkis, 29: English teacher at Central York High School in York, Pa., allegedly had sex with a 17-year-old boy after giving him alcohol. Authorties accuse her of five alleged sex acts during October and November 2005.
Samantha Solomon, 29: Guidance counselor at the High School for Health Professions and Human Services in Manhattan, N.Y. was fired after school bosses learned she was having sex with a teenage boy. She denies the allegations, attributing them to rumors gone wild.
Sandra "Beth" Geisel, 42: English teacher at Christian Brothers Academy, an all-boys school in Albany, N.Y., allegedly had sex three times with a 16-year-old male student in May 2005, including once on school grounds in the football stadium's press box. Originally indicted in September for three counts of third degree rape, she pleaded guilty to a single count of rape and was sentenced to six months in jail, and ranked as a Level 1 sex offender, the lowest risk.
Shelley Allen, 35: Teacher's aide from Cherokee County, Texas, was arrested in June 2005. Allen was charged with sexual assault of a child and faces a possible 20 years behind bars.
Shelley White, 24: Geography teacher in Britain had been engaged to be married before she kissed a 15-year-old student on at least three occasions. She avoided jail, but received 12 months community service.
Sherry Brians, 41: Middle-school language-arts instructor in Buttonwillow, Calif., originally arrested in January 2006 on suspicion of engaging in lewd acts with a 12-year-old male student, a felony that involves sexual contact. She pleaded not guilty to two counts of annoying or molesting a child under 18.
Stephanie Burleson: Volleyball coach and teacher at Floresville High School in Texas six years ago, pleaded guilty to all charges for molesting a 16-year-old female student. She was sentenced to 10 years probation, and required to register as a sex offender.
Susan Eble, 35: Former teacher's aide is accused of having a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old boy.
Tara Lynn Crisp, 29: Police allege she had sex with a student at least three times beginning when he was 14.
Toni Lynn Woods, 37: Middle-school teacher in Braxton County, W.Va., confessed to having sexual intercourse with three juveniles a total of four times and oral sex with one of those juveniles and another juvenile a total of four times. She resigned and surrendered her teaching certificate.
Traci Tapp, 28: Gym teacher at Hammonton High School in New Jersey accused of sexual contact with three male students, including having sex in her home multiple times in one night with a 16-year-old. In January 2006, she avoided any jail or probation time by admitting inappropriate touching, but she lost her teaching license. (Joe Kovacs/WorldNetDaily.com 12/14/05)
The big list: Female teachers with students 12/6/07
(Young victims mostly male, while penalties often hand slap)
BadBadTeacher.com
Previous stories:
The big list: Female teachers with students
Sex assaults by teachers on students an 'epidemic'
'Boys as victims' don't fit expectations
Teacher's sex with student taped, say police
Twin teachers busted over lewd act
Gym teacher accused of same-sex assault on student
Teacher – and husband – in sex-with-students arrest
Now it's the principal's wife having sex
Woman guilty of sex with 14-year-old boy
O'Reilly eyes WND's teacher-sex coverage tonight
Grand jury declines to indict female teacher
'Sexy substitute' gets no jail
Another woman gets no jail time
Father of LaFave's boy toy: Debra should have got jail
Florida dismisses LaFave's charges
Judge to tell teachers: No sex with students
Sexy substitute teacher 'has relations with boy'
Woman pleads guilty to sex with student
Lesbian teacher rapist off hook – no jail time
Again! Homosexual teacher gets no jail for teen assault
Judge: No prison time for 'gay' rapist teacher
Teacher investigated for 'raping' boy quits
Again! Woman 'has sex with boy, 12'
U.S. teacher sexpidemic spreading across planet
Did 'rapist' teacher have sex with 3 other boys?
Again! Woman accused of intercourse with boy
Teacher-student sex OK, says prof
Police: Teacher had lesbian affair with girl, 15
'Pure nastiness': Teacher too sexy for God?
10-year-old forced to lick teacher's toes
Another teacher faces sex charge
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COMMENTS
Affidavit: Principal's Affair With Teen Unfolded During Ice Storm
Posted
By: 
Bernie
on 10/9/2009 7:50:56 AM
"The former principal of a Catholic school in Daviess County, Ky., confessed to having sex with a teen-ager during last winter’s ice storm, according to an arrest affidavit.
Allison Brant, 31, is to be arraigned today in an Owensboro courtroom on one count of third-degree rape and three counts of third-degree sodomy.
In an unrelated matter, she also faces misdemeanor charges for allegedly giving alcohol to four teen-age boys on Sept. 4.
She resigned last week as principal of Saint Mary of the Woods School amid a Kentucky State Police probe of her conduct.
Detective Brian Whittaker investigated the sex allegations. He wrote in an affidavit that both Brant, who is married, and the 15-year-old boy told him that their trysts occurred while the region was stymied by the ice storm.
The two met at both the boy’s home and at Brant’s, according to the affidavit.
Saint Mary of the Woods has students in preschool to eighth grade. Students then move on to Trinity High School. Both schools are in Whitesville, a community of about 600 people.
Police have not confirmed where the 15-year-old boy attends school, or where the four boys Brant allegedly gave alcohol to last month attend. They are aged 16-18.
All felony cases in Kentucky are considered by county grand juries before charges are formally filed.
Daviess County Commonwealth’s Attorney Bruce Kuegel, who declined Thursday to discuss specifics of Brant’s case, said that if Brant is indicted on the felony counts, those cases would be adjudicated in Daviess Circuit Court.
The misdemeanor charges of third-degree unlawful transaction with a minor are to be handled in Daviess District Court.
Brant was arrested Wednesday and later released from the Daviess County Detention Center, pending her court appearances. Her bond is $37,000.
Diocese of Owensboro officials learned of allegations of misconduct involving Brant last week. They say they contacted authorities within 24 hours.
The Rev. Michael Clark, administrator of the diocese, said Brant had been thought of as a model educator.
She came to Saint Mary of the Woods as a teacher in 2000 and became principal in 2006.
PREVIOUSLY: A Catholic school principal who had long been known as a committed, popular and effective educator was jailed Wednesday, accused of having sex with one teenager and supplying alcohol to four others.
Allison Brant, 31, resigned last week as principal of Saint Mary of the Woods School in Whitesville, Ky., a community of just over 600 people east of Owensboro in Daviess County.
Kentucky State Police arrested Brant at her home Wednesday afternoon on one count of third-degree rape and three counts of third-degree sodomy. She was released from jail on a $37,000 bond, pending an initial court appearance Friday morning.
The charges stem from an alleged sexual relationship the principal had with a 15-year-old male over an eight-week period in late 2008 and early 2009, said Corey King, a spokesman with the state police Henderson post.
As state police were investigating the sex accusations last week, deputies with the Daviess County Sheriff’s Department were looking into another case involving claims that Brant gave alcohol to boys aged 18, 18, 17 and 16.
That alleged incident occurred Sept. 4, and it led sheriff’s deputies to seek four misdemeanor charges of third-degree unlawful transaction with a minor.
The two police investigations “are totally separate and didn’t even involve the same individuals,” said Lt. Col. Jeff Jones of the sheriff’s department.
School officials with the Diocese of Owensboro first learned last week of allegations of potentially criminal misconduct involving Brant, said the Rev. Michael Clark, administrator of the diocese.
Brant joined Saint Mary of the Woods in 2000 as a teacher. She became the school’s principal in 2006.
During her career, she earned a reputation as being “bright, articulate, vivacious and involved” and was well-liked by both teachers and parents, Clark said.
Officials with the diocese were “startled” after learning of the allegations, but they contacted the office of Daviess County Commonwealth’s Attorney Bruce Kuegel within 24 hours, Clark said.
Brant was arrested at her home Wednesday afternoon by Kentucky State Police, and is in the Daviess County Detention Center awaiting an initial court appearance, King said.
Saint Mary of the Woods is a school for preschool through eighth grade. Its students later attend Trinity High School in Whitesville, which is nearby.
Authorities are not confirming where the teenagers involved in the allegations against Brant attend school.
“My concern is for all parties involved, for the well-being of children at the grade school and the high school and for the St. Mary’s community in Whitesville,” Clark said. “We’re concerned about the well being of the pastor and everyone involved, including Ms. Brant.”
The school will soon conduct what Clark described as “a healing service.” He said the service will be a vehicle for students to understand the situation and speak to counselors if they wish.
Brant resigned last Thursday. Bill Hagan, the principal of Trinity High School, is serving on an interim basis as principal of Saint Mary of the Woods." (John Martin/CourierPress.com 10/7/09)
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Teacher Charged With Having Sex With Former Student
Posted
By:
Bernie
on 5/26/2009 7:33:29 AM
"Bond was set at $50,000 Monday for a Maine East High School teacher charged with having sex with a 16-year-old former student.
Jennifer Espinosa, 38, of Park Ridge, was charged with two counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse as a result of an eight-month relationship with a former student, according to a Cook County Sheriff’s office release.
Espinosa told police she “loves” the 16-year-old boy, who was expelled from Maine East in September and is a known Sureno 13 gang member, the release said.
Espinosa was taken in for questioning by Sheriff’s police on Saturday night near the Golf Terrace Apartments, in the 9600 block of N. Golf Terrace, after police smelled a strong odor of marijuana coming from behind Espinosa’s 2009 Honda Pilot, the release said.
As police curbed the car and noticed the windows were rolled down, they noticed one person moving quickly to a back seat. All people in the car were ordered out and Espinosa immediately told police she was a Maine East teacher, the release said.
Officers recognized the 16-year-old boy and a 22-year-old man as known gang members.
Police searched the car and recovered a bag of suspected marijuana. Alejandro Landi, 22, of Niles, was charged with misdemeanor drug possession.
Upon questioning of the suspects in the vehicle, Espinosa told investigators she was a teacher and mentor to the boy until he was expelled. She said their relationship began after his expulsion, the release said.
Police said they told them they have had sex numerous times, in her Park Ridge home and in her car at various locations around the high school.
Espinosa, who is married with two children, was a former soccer coach at Maine East and teaches science and special education at the school, the release said.
Espinosa appeared in Skokie bond court Monday and must post $5,000 cash, or 10 percent of her bond to be released from custody.
She is scheduled for a preliminary hearing on Friday, May 29." (wbbm780.com 5/25/09)
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Mary K. Letourneau Hosts 'Hot Teacher' Night
Posted
By:
UFO
on 5/25/2009 9:13:02 AM
"The odyssey of Mary Kay Letourneau, which began years ago when she was a 34-year-old teacher who raped a sixth-grade student, has now evolved into "Hot for Teacher" night at a Pioneer Square bar.
But the bar's owner says the event is all in fun, and he hopes people take it in the right spirit.
Letourneau, who eventually served time for raping her former student then later married him after her release from prison, will be hosting the event Saturday at Fuel Sports Eats & Beats on Washington Street.
Letourneau's former student, Vili Fualaau, will be there, too. He'll be the DJ, spinning Top 40 and club classic hits all night.
Fuel's owner, Mike Morris, said he realizes having Letourneau host a "Hot Teacher" night could be touchy and might rub some people the wrong way.
But the way he figures it, "Mary's done her time. She's served her sentence. They're now married; they have kids together."
"It's turned into sort of a love story," he says. "I realize it had a sick twist at the beginning, but they're both adults now. They're both married by the state of Washington. So, it's just go and have fun on a Saturday night - and if people are looking to have some fun, just come check us out."
Morris said this is actually the third time that Letourneau and Fualaau have hosted a "Hot for Teachers" night at the nightclub. The first two events were low-key, and he said patrons really warmed up to the couple.
"We get lots of people who want to come meet them. And once they do meet them, they're like, 'Oh my God, she's so down-to-earth and so nice, and he's such a good DJ,' that it's creating like a stir or a buzz, and its bringing people back," Morris says.
Letourneau's role is to make people feel welcome and comfortable, he says.
"She meets people, she greets people, she dances to music, she hosts the party," Morris says. "And she's an absolute sweetheart. And everyone who meets her realizes that and is kind of flabbergasted by how nice she is."
Morris says the idea for "Hot Teacher" night was cooked up between him and Fualaau.
"It was sort of a joke but sort of real, and it was just something that we thought was a good name for it, and of course we got Mary's permission to do it," he says. "She's really trying to kick-start his career."
Morris says the passage of time since the original crime should blunt any criticism.
"It wouldn't be funny if it was a situation that was happening right now. By all means, that wouldn't be funny," he says. "But it's a situation that happened a long time ago, she served her time, now they're married, they had kids together, and we're just having fun."
The couple first met when Fualaau was in the second grade. Their relationship became sexual when he was 12 and she was a 34-year-old married mother of four, a teacher at a suburban elementary school.
Letourneau was pregnant with Fualaau's first child when she was arrested in 1997. She pleaded guilty to second-degree child rape and was sentenced to 7½ years in prison, with all but six months suspended.
Within weeks of her release, she was caught having sex with Fualaau in her car and ordered to serve the remainder of her sentence. She gave birth to the couple's second daughter while serving time.
She was released from prison in August 2004 and the two were reunited. They got married in May 2005 at a tightly guarded ceremony at the Columbia Winery in Woodinville.
Since then, they've kept a fairly low profile - until now." (KOMONews.com 5/21/09)
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Montco Teacher Charged In Sex Case
Posted
By:
UFO
on 5/25/2009 9:10:18 AM
Heather Lynne Zeo reportedly ignored an important message from her Christian upbringing: Thou shalt not commit adultery.
Police said yesterday that Zeo, 37, a married math teacher from North Penn High School in Lansdale, admitted to having a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old student last month. She allegedly also left sexually explicit Internet and phone messages for another student earlier in the school year.
Zeo, a mother of three, posted 10 percent of $25,000 bail yesterday after being arraigned before District Justice Harold Borek on charges of endangering the welfare of children and corruption of minors.
Zeo, a Christian singer who has released two CDs - "Light as a Feather" in 2003 and "Musically Math" in 2008 - contacted the boys on Facebook, one earlier in the school year and the other last month, according to the affidavit of probable cause.
The teen who police say had sex with Zeo told police that he had received and accepted a friend request from Zeo on Facebook and that throughout the affair they would communicate on the site at night about the sex acts that they were going to perform with one another, the affidavit said.
"The facts really speak for themselves," Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Ferman said at a news conference yesterday announcing the charges.
"We're dealing with a teacher, and a teacher is in a very unique position of trust and authority in both the school and the community," Ferman said.
Zeo began meeting the boy in her classroom during her free periods, for "kissing and petting," when no one would be in the room, the affidavit said.
During the second week of May, Zeo told the youth they had to be more secretive because rumors were spreading around school that she was having an inappropriate relationship with a student, according to the affidavit.
So, police said Zeo drove her minivan to the Target parking lot in Montgomery Township on two occasions to continue their tryst, the affidavit said.
The boy told police that on the second occasion, he and Zeo had sex in her car, the affidavit said.
The school district contacted police after being tipped off to the affair, Ferman said.
The other boy told police that earlier in the year, he had about five conversations with Zeo that were sexual in nature and that at one point, she told him that she probably would have sexual contact with him when they were in a room alone together. She told him to come to her classroom but he never did, the affidavit said.
As school let out yesterday, reactions ranged from shocked parents to unfazed students.
"It wasn't that surprising," said Jeff Masters, a senior at North Penn High School, who went to Zeo for math tutoring. "She was more like a friend or a student than a teacher."
Jen, a 10th-grader at the school who asked that her last name not be used, said she found the fact that a teacher would use Facebook to communicate with students disturbing.
"I think it's kind of creepy," she said. "Once she left a post for one of my guy friends that said, 'Nightie night.' "
Manu Jaggi, the father of a 10th-grade student, was shocked to hear of Zeo's arrest.
"It's a little unsettling," Jaggi said. "The safety of the children is number one. But unfortunately, the problem is that you are hearing about stuff like this more and more in the schools these days." (CHRISTINE OLLEY/Philadelphia Daily News 5/22/09)
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Harford Teacher Arrested For Soliciting Boy
Posted
By:
Heidi
on 3/22/2009 6:13:27 PM
"A Harford County physical education teacher is in police custody for allegedly sexually soliciting a 15-year-old Prince George's County boy, officials say.
Jonathan S. Dicks, 43, of the 1300-block of Sheridan Place in Bel Air, has been charged with two counts of solicitation of a minor.
Maryland State Police first began investigating the Fallston Middle School gym teacher in February when the victim's parents complained to police about sexually explicit text messages being sent to their son from Dick.
Police took the victim's cell phone and computer. They were able to pull up internet chats that appear to have lasted the span of a couple weeks. The two met on a social networking website.
Dick has been placed on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of an investigation. He has worked with Harford County Public Schools since 1999. He also worked as a boy's lacrosse coach for Fallston High School. He was arrested at the Harford County Administrative Offices at noon today.
If convicted, Dick faces up to ten years in prison and/or a $25,000 fine for each count.
Anyone who may have information about this case is asked to call the Child Advocacy Center at 410-638-3294." (abc2news.com 3/20/09)
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Hartville Teacher Is Accused Of Sexual Contact With Student
Posted
By:
Heidi
on 3/22/2009 5:57:05 PM
"A kindergarten teacher is charged with having sexual contact with a high school student and furnishing pornography to him. A detective says the investigation of Katherine Hicks of Niangua started last week after the student's mother complained to city police.
In the probable cause statement used as the basis of charges, the detective says the 17-year-old student says he and Hicks had a personal relationship that included kissing, him touching her breast, her touching his rear, and an exchange of nude pictures and "dirty messages" via cellular telephones. The student was in her classroom to be a tutor for the A+ Program, which requires high school students to tutor other students as one requirement to be eligible for a community college scholarship.
To read the probable cause statement and charges against Hicks, click here.
The detective says the student's mother filed a complaint with police after hearing reports of an inappropriate relationship between her son and Hicks. Police questioned several teachers and the high school principal, and brought Hicks in for questioning on Wednesday. The detective says she didn't admit anything except exchanging text messages. An officer arrested her after the interview." (ky3.com 3/19/09)
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Teacher Accused Of Sending Naked Pics Of Herself To Boy, 14
Posted
By:
Heidi
on 3/10/2009 11:01:04 AM
"A St. Petersburg teacher is accused of sending pornographic pictures of herself to a 14-year-old boy.
Police say Christy Lynn Martin, 32, admitted she used a cell phone to exchange naked pictures with the boy last weekend.
She was booked into the Pinellas County Jail on Saturday night on charges of transmitting pornographic images through an electronic device and transmitting material harmful to a minor. She was released the next day on bond.
Police spokesman Bill Profitt says the teen, an eighth-grader who is not being identified, told investigators he and the teacher had a relationship." (AP/Sun-Sentinel.com 3/9/09)
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Former Lake Worth Teacher Charged With Having Sex With Teen Boy
Posted
By:
Heidi
on 3/10/2009 10:58:10 AM
Says he attacked her
"A 52-year-old former teacher at Park Vista High School in Lake Worth faced a jury this morning, accused of sexual activity with a teenager.
Donna Lea Smith stands charged with five counts of the crime as well as lewd and lascivious molestation for alleged repeat sexual encounters with the boy.
The youth was not a Park Vista student.
Smith's defense attorney, Richard Lubin, told jurors this morning that the troubled teen sexually attacked Smith. She did not immediately report it to police, he said, because she cared for him and did not want him to get in trouble - but did want him to get help.
"In hindsight she might say that was the wrong decision, but that's the one she made," Lubin said.
At one point, Smith told a therapist counseling the teen that the therapist should address his sexual behaviors.
The therapist testified today that days later he did ask the teen about sex and was told of repeat consensual encounters with Smith. The therapist then contacted child abuse investigators as he was required to do.
Assistant State Attorney Aleathea McRoberts asked the therapist if Smith ever told him that the teen had attacked her or raped her? "No," he answered. "No."
The teen, now 18, also testified today answering Assistant State Attorney Angela Miller's questions about multiple alleged encounters, punctuating his answers with "Yes, ma'am" and "No, ma'am."
The trial, in front of Circuit Judge Jeffrey Colbath, is expected to continue through the week.
According to the Palm Beach County School District records, Smith is currently working in the transportation department.
Sexual activity with a child is first-degree felony punishable by a maximum of 30 years in prison." (SUSAN SPENCER-WENDEL/Palm Beach Post 2/10/09)
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Two Bountiful Jr. High Teachers Accused Of Sex With Same Student
Posted
By:
UFO
on 3/7/2009 5:43:15 PM
"Two Bountiful Junior High School teachers are accused of sexually assaulting the same 13-year-old student, after their separate relationships with him spiraled from personal conversations to the exchange of sexual text messages and phone sex, authorities said.
On Friday, the Davis County Attorney's Office filed first-degree felony charges of rape and sodomy on a child against Linda R. Nef, 46, and Valynne Bowers, 39.
Nef, a Utah studies teacher and cheerleading adviser, and Bowers, who teaches math, each confessed to having sex with the student, said Bountiful Police Lt. Randy Pickett. Until recently, the two teachers did not know about each other's relationship with the same boy, Pickett said.
The charges were filed after Nef arranged a meeting with police on Thursday and admitted having sex with the boy for more than a year, Pickett said. Their sexual relationship allegedly began in October 2007 and lasted until December 2008, he said.
During the meeting, Nef revealed Bowers' relationship with the boy, Pickett said. Bowers allegedly began having sex with him in December, and she also has acknowledged the relationship, he said.
Nef was booked into the Davis County Jail on Friday afternoon and has her first court appearance scheduled for 1:30 p.m. March 27.
Bowers also was arrested and booked into the jail on Friday, Pickett said. She later appeared in court, where she waived her right to a preliminary hearing and was ordered to stand trial. A felony arraignment in her case is scheduled for 9 a.m. March 16.
Nef, who began her career with the Davis County School District in 2004 as a physical education teacher at Taylor Elementary School, resigned from her post at the junior high on Monday, said school district spokesman Chris Williams.
Bowers was placed on administrative leave while district officials conduct their own investigation. Bowers has taught in the district since 1996 and was an elementary school teacher for nine years before she transferred to Bountiful Junior High in 2006, Williams said.
"So far, there is nothing to indicate that there are any other students involved, or any other faculty or employees involved," Pickett said.
In separate conversations, the boy and the two teachers began discussing personal problems, Pickett said. That led to text messages, including ones involving sexual matters, then phone sex and the alleged sexual assaults, Pickett said.
The investigation so far indicates none of the alleged sex acts occurred at the school, Pickett said. Instead, the teachers allegedly went with the student to homes, parking lots or parks in Bountiful, Woods Cross, Farmington and Kaysville.
Williams said parents picking up their children from the school Friday expressed disbelief and shock. Jenifer Wright, whose eighth-grade daughter attends the school, said the news alarmed her.
"It makes me very worried. I'm very protective about my children," she said.
Holly Ruhr, whose seventh-grade daughter attends the school, said she is not worried by the charges because she has been "impressed in every way" by Bountiful Junior High.
"My daughter is thrilled to go to class every day," she said. "This is just a case of one or two teachers. Not a bad school."
Another parent struggled to believe the allegations, defending Bowers as a great teacher.
Recent cases
Since 2007, at least 10 other Utah teachers or school employees have been charged with engaging in sexual acts with students. Among recent cases:
In November 2007, Frank Laine Hall, 37, was sentenced to prison for molesting 11 of his first-grade students at Rosamond Elementary School in Riverton.
Also in 2007, former West High School guidance counselor Marco R. Herrera, 53, received three consecutive one-to-15 year prison terms for engaging in sexual acts with a 14-year-old girl at least 10 times. An honors teacher at the same school was charged in 2008 with multiple counts of having sex with the same girl; his case is pending." (Steve Gehrke And Jason Bergreen/The Salt Lake Tribune 3/7/09)
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Ex-Teacher Gets House Arrest In Student-Sex Case
Posted
By:
Bernie
on 3/2/2009 10:58:51 AM
"A former Warner Christian Academy teacher said Friday she was ashamed when she pleaded no contest to having unlawful sexual activity with a 17-year-old student.
Cynthia Horvath, 45, of South Daytona avoided a possible 15 years in prison by pleading to the second-degree felony. But she did not avoid punishment in a plea agreement.
"Obviously, there is a double standard,"
"There's no winning a case like this," said her lawyer, Aaron Delgado. "Even if she was found not guilty at trial, she was ruined the day her name came out."
Television news cameras were packed in the back row of the courtroom when Horvath agreed to be designated a sexual offender. Under the plea deal, which is what the student and his parents wanted, she was placed on house arrest for a year.
Horvath's house arrest is to be followed by strict sexual offender probation, with curfews and lie-detector tests, for another seven years. The mother of four is prohibited from having contact with the student, or any children other than her own. She is no longer allowed to teach.
"She might be off probation in eight years, but she'll always have that marker, that designation," her lawyer said. "At the end of the day, my client is a registered sex offender and a convicted felon."
Circuit Judge J. David Walsh warned Horvath that straying from the terms of her sentence could land her in prison. With her husband seated in the gallery behind her, Horvath said she was sorry.
"Without reservations or condition, I accept responsibility for my actions and the punishments that are assigned to me," said Horvath, her face taut and distressed. On the side of the courtroom opposite her husband, the mother and father of her former student sat and watched.
They didn't wish to say anything, prosecutor Tiffany Stucker said.
Horvath taught English and cheerleading at the private school in South Daytona when details of the affair came to light. In an eight-page arrest affidavit, Port Orange police detectives in October described lurid details of sex acts between the teacher and boy, who has since turned 18.
The police reports detailed steamy text messages Horvath sent to the high school senior, some praising his sexual prowess. She warned him to keep their summer affair -- with its trysts in cars in Walmart and Publix parking lots, and motel rooms -- quiet.
Investigators said the boy, whose name is not being published because of the sexual nature of the case, kept mementos of the encounters. Black thong underwear, motel keys and a picture of Horvath were kept in a box by the student.
The plea agreement was hashed out between Horvath's attorney, Delgado, and prosecutors late last year. The deal was delayed until the new administration of State Attorney R.J. Larizza took office.
Delgado said his focus was avoiding prison for Horvath, and there was some concern the new administration might rethink the terms. He added that Larizza was "a man of his word and honor" by keeping the deal intact. One of the most difficult sanctions to be hashed out was Horvath being labeled a sexual offender, which Delgado opposed.
"Absolutely that had to be part of any plea agreement," said Chris Kelly, spokesman for the State Attorney's Office.
By avoiding prison, the outcome appeared to support a perception of a double standard between women and men. Stories like hers have become a national trend, as more and more teachers are charged with having sexual encounters with teenage students.
Last month, a former Flagler Palm Coast High School teacher was sentenced to seven years in prison for having oral sex with a student. In that case, the teacher was a man. The boy he engaged in sex acts with was 16.
"Obviously, there is a double standard," Delgado said. "I guess, in this case, it worked into my client's benefit. I think the perception is a jury would be more likely to exercise its pardon power in a case like this, than if the gender roles were reversed."
Prosecutors said they felt the outcome was appropriate, after "reviewing all of the facts." In last month's Flagler case, the boy's family wanted prison for the teacher, Kelly said.
"We'd be doing a disservice if we did not take into account the unique facts of every case," he said. "This is a situation where this is what the victim and the victim's family wanted. We feel this is an appropriate sentence."
Delgado said it was Horvath's idea to accept responsibility. She said she was ashamed for her choices that "harmed those who trusted me. I have hurt people I love."
"I apologize to all those I've hurt and plead for forgiveness," she said. "Thank you for the mercy you've shown me."
Outside the courtroom, reporters and cameras were waiting when Horvath and her husband emerged together. They followed the couple outside but got no comment." (JAY STAPLETON/News-JournalOnline.com 2/28/09)
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Former Teacher Sentenced
Posted
By:
UFO
on 2/20/2009 3:48:14 PM
A former Belaire High School art teacher was put on probation after pleading guilty Tuesday to charges that accused her of having off-campus sex with a 15-year-old male student in the fall 2007.
State District Judge Todd Hernandez actually sentenced 29-year-old Kesha D. Manuel to eight years in prison at hard labor on a felony charge of cruelty to a juvenile and six months in East Baton Rouge Parish Prison on a misdemeanor charge of carnal knowledge of a juvenile, but suspended both terms.
Hernandez put Manuel on active supervised probation for five years on the felony charge. During that time period, the judge said Manuel cannot have any contact with the victim and cannot be employed or engaged in volunteer work that involves anyone under 17.
The judge placed Manuel on unsupervised bench probation for two years on the misdemeanor charge.
Manuel’s attorney, Bob Hester, said afterward the matter with the student was an “isolated incident.’’
Manuel admitted she and the boy met at a public library in October 2007 and had sex in a stall in the women’s restroom, according to an affidavit of probable cause. She also admitted allowing the boy to kiss and fondle her in her classroom during free periods, the affidavit said.
Hester said it doesn’t make what Manuel did right, but noted the boy was very aggressive and continued to send her notes, letters and poems even after their conduct came to light.
Manuel pleaded no contest last fall to a felony charge of carnal knowledge of a juvenile. She withdrew that plea Tuesday.
Prosecutor Sue Bernie told Hernandez the victim’s father agreed with the amended charges filed against Manuel and with the stipulated sentences.
Hester said outside the courtroom that a felony carnal knowledge conviction would have required Manuel, who has a 2-year-old daughter, to register as a convicted sex offender.
Manuel can never teach again, he said." (JOE GYAN JR./2TheAdvocate.com 2/18/09)
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Female High School Teacher Accused Of Sexual Battery
Posted
By:
UFO
on 2/20/2009 3:45:36 PM
"A Bliss High School teacher has been charged with two counts of sexual battery of a minor child 16 years of age.
Anna Bettencourt, 38, of Wendell, was arraigned on yesterday in Gooding County.
Magistrate Judge Casey Robinson advised Bettencourt of the charges, both of which carry a maximum penalty of life in prison.
Bettencourt’s preliminary hearing has been set for March 19.
Due to a conflict of interest, the Gooding County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office will petition the court to appoint a special prosecutor to handle this case.
NewsChannel 7 inquired about the conflict of interest, but no explanation was offerred." (KTVB.com 2/19/09)
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Russell County Teacher Accused Of Having Sex With Student
Posted
By:
Heidi
on 2/16/2009 1:08:04 PM
A high school teacher in Russell County makes her first court appearance on charges that she had a sexual relationship with a male student.
Lucas-Luray High School English teacher Nina Urban is free on $10,000 bond after Thursday's hearing on a charge of unlawful sexual relations. Her lawyer said a preliminary hearing will be set at a later date.
Urban turned herself in to local authorities and posted bond on Jan. 29. She was arrested after the student's parents told sheriff's investigators that their son and Urban had been having a sexual relationship.
Superintendent David Couch said Urban is on administrative leave pending the outcome of the case. He said she was in her third year of teaching at the school." Lucas-Luray High School English teacher Nina Urban is free on $10,000 bond after Thursday's hearing on a charge of unlawful sexual relations." (Associated Press/KSALlink.com 2/13/09)
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Woman Charged With Sexual Battery, Molestation Of Girl, 14, She Was Tutoring
Posted
By:
Heidi
on 2/16/2009 1:04:46 PM
Gulfport teacher, basketball coach facing
"North Gulfport 7th and 8th Grades school teacher and basketball coach Catryna L. Martin will be suspended, effective Monday, from her current posts because of her arrest late Friday on charges accusing her of sex crimes against a 14-year-old girl, Harrison County School Superintendent Henry Arledge said today.
Arledge said Martin is, in effect, being terminated from her posts, though she could appeal to the School Board to keep her job. That, he said, is unlikely.
Martin was charged with one count each of sexual battery and molestation. She’s accused of committing the crimes while she was supposed to be tutoring the former student.
Gulfport Police Chief Alan Weatherford said an investigation started after the victim’s parents alerted police to the possible criminal activity.
Martin was taken to the Harrison County jail, where Justice Court Judge Gene Dedeaux set her bond at a total of $1 million." (MARGARET BAKER/SunHerald.com 2/14/09)
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Teacher Allegedly Seduces Boy, 13
Posted
By:
G-man
on 1/12/2009 1:58:51 PM
Cops: Affair lasted 2 years
"A married South Shore teacher was living a disturbed double life for nearly two years, police said, allegedly seducing a 13-year-old boy, plying him with booze and having sex with him on kitchen floors and couches, sometimes right under the nose of her husband.
Christine A. McCallum, 29, who is on leave from her job at an Abington elementary school, was charged yesterday with seven counts of statutory rape for the serial liaisons in Rockland and Abington from February 2006, when she allegedly took the boy’s virginity, to November 2007.
McCallum, a waifish bespectacled blonde who tightly clutched her husband’s hand in court yesterday, declined comment.
But her alleged teenage conquest told police they had sex more than 300 times - almost “every other day” while he was 13, 14 and 15 years old. The boy told police they had sex for the first time Feb. 7, 2006, on a couch at McCallum’s Rockland home while her husband slept upstairs, according to a police report.
McCallum and the boy had unprotected sex in the shower, on the kitchen floor and the living room floor on a green shag rug that was seized yesterday as a result of a search warrant, court documents say.
McCallum’s lawyer, Frederick McDermott, said McCallum took in the boy and his younger brother, who were being raised by a single dad. She denies all the allegations.
“She tried to mother the child because she felt sorry for them,” he said.
McCallum weaved her way into the boy’s life in late 2005, prosecutors said, when she became a tutor for his younger brother, let them stay at her house, emptied their backpacks after school, fed them dinner and gave them rides.
But within months, prosecutors said, McCallum was plying the boy with cranberry and vodka drinks, Jell-o shots and rum, and sleeping with him in her house and his house.
McCallum ended the relationship in November 2007 in a fit of jealousy, after she found out he was using the cell phone she bought him to text other girls, police said. They had sex that night for the last time, police said.
“She was crying. She kissed him and told him she loved him. He told her he loved her,” according to a police report.
Plymouth prosecutor Michael Scott said McCallum was “obsessed” with the boy, writing the boy 10 love letters. “I would choose you over this job,” she wrote, Scott said. “I trust you that ‘this’ can work.”
In a MySpace [website] message, McCallum wrote that she struggled with her desires, Scott said. “It’s hard to be with you and set boundaries,” she allegedly wrote. “It’s hard to kiss you and tell you no.”
Police said the boy’s father contacted police Tuesday after a friend of the boy told his mother about the affair. The mother told the boy’s father." (Jessica Fargen/BostonHerald.com 1/10/09)
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Female Teacher Accused Of Sex With Teen
Posted
By:
Bernie
on 12/27/2008 6:57:34 AM
"(UPI) -- A teacher on leave from a private high school in Minnesota faces charges she had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl who had been her student.
Authorities said Melissa Diana Koehn, 30, of Kenosha, Wis., was charged by the Dakota County Attorney's office Tuesday with three felony counts of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct and freed on $10,000 bail, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported Wednesday.
An Apple Valley police officer said he found Koehn and the teen kissing in a car in a parking lot near a soccer field Saturday and became suspicious because of the apparent age difference between the two. He notified the girl's parents and turned the case over to a detective.
Koehn had been the teen's teacher and coach last year at St. Croix Lutheran High School in West St. Paul, authorities said. She continued to see the girl after starting her leave of absence from the school in June, sometimes sleeping over at the teen's home, police said. The girl still attends the school.
According to the criminal complaint, the girl's parents told authorities they believed she had slept on the floor of their daughter's bedroom and were unaware of any sexual activity.
Under Minnesota law, 16 is the age of consent for a sexual relationship. However, teachers, coaches or others in position of authority over a young person are prohibited from sexual contact with someone age 16 or 17.
Her next court appearance is scheduled for Feb. 9 in Hastings." (UPI 12/24/08)
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Tustin High School Athletic Trainer Arrested On Sex Charges
Posted
By:
Bernie
on 12/27/2008 6:40:49 AM
Orange County Sheriff's Department says it arrested Hope Jacoby, 23, on suspicion of engaging in sex acts with an underage boy. She has worked with athletes at the school for a year.
An athletic trainer at Tustin High School has been arrested on suspicion of engaging in unlawful sex acts with a student at the school, an Orange County sheriff's spokesman said Wednesday.
Hope Jacoby, 23, who has worked with athletes at the school for the last year, was arrested last week on suspicion of oral copulation of a minor and unlawful sex with a minor, said Sheriff's Department spokesman Jim Amormino.
Sheriff's deputies were informed of the unlawful acts by someone who saw a text message photograph, Amormino said. The boy was between 14 and 17 years old.
Jacoby, who lives in San Juan Capistrano, was jailed in lieu of $100,000 bail, Amormino said. Investigators believe there may have been other victims, he said.
Sheriff's officials arrested Jacoby because she abused a "position of trust," Amormino said. "Even though the age gap may be fairly close, it's still illegal and we will arrest," he said." (Stuart Pfeifer/LATimes.com 12/25/08)
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Teacher's Conduct Investigated Once Before
Posted
By:
Bernie
on 12/27/2008 6:38:51 AM
Mt. Hebron parent made charge against band director in 2007
A prominent Howard County high school band director accused of sexually abusing a female student was investigated by school officials almost two years ago after a parent reported seeing the girl sitting on his lap in his office, according to court documents released yesterday.
Police said Robert Douglas Johnston, 61, who has taught at Mount Hebron High School in Ellicott City for 35 years, sexually abused the student over a two-year period that began when she was 15. He was arrested Monday and charged with sexual abuse of a minor, third- and fourth-degree sex offenses, and obscene telephone misuse. He could face up to 25 years in prison if convicted.
At a hearing yesterday in Howard Circuit Court, a judge cut Johnston's bail from $350,000 to $25,000 after his attorney, Michele M. Shimek, argued that Johnston poses neither a flight risk nor a danger to the community.
Charging documents said Mount Hebron's principal told police Johnston had been the subject of an in-school investigation in February 2007 after a parent told school officials of seeing the student sitting on Johnston's lap.
Patti Caplan, a school system spokeswoman, declined to comment yesterday on that incident, citing school policy prohibiting public comment on personnel matters.
School Superintendent Sydney L. Cousin said yesterday: "We're going to do what's right by the kids. It's much better for these things to come to the surface than go unreported."
Johnston has taught in the county school system for 39 years, including the last 35 as director of award-winning bands at Mount Hebron in Ellicott City. He was suspended with pay on Dec. 8.
According to the charging documents, the case began when Principal Scott Ruehl called police after receiving an e-mail Dec. 6 that included copies of personal messages between Johnston and the alleged victim. Police interviewed the girl three times on three different days starting on Dec. 8. Initially she described Johnston as her friend and said "nothing has ever happened" between them.
In an interview with police the next day, Johnston denied sexual contact. He confirmed sending and receiving some of the e-mail messages and stated that the two had an "uncle/niece" relationship, according to the charging documents.
In a second interview, the girl told police that the two had a romantic relationship and that Johnston told her he wanted to have sex with her. She said he often fondled, hugged and kissed her in the band room, according to the court documents, but said the two never had intercourse. Three days later she told police she had not revealed everything that had happened, and gave a list of several forms of sexual contact that had occurred between them.
Wearing a dark gray jumpsuit, Johnston appeared at yesterday's hearing before District Judge Neil Edward Axel via a video feed from a holding cell at the county detention center. His wife, Ann, who also is a teacher at Mount Hebron, attended the hearing. She and Shimek declined to comment after the hearing.
Johnston was released on bail yesterday afternoon, said a spokesman for the county state's attorney's office. He's banned from the school and ordered not to have any contact with the victim." (Larry Carson/BaltimoreSun.com 12/25/08)
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The Reason Women Teachers Prey On Boys
Posted
By:
Bernie
on 12/27/2008 6:32:29 AM
Reader sees deleterious effect of feminism on GenX females
"The reasons for the epidemic of women teachers preying upon male students are easy to understand. If one follows the news, most of the women are between 30 and 45. This is Generation X, wherein radical feminism hit its nadir. Being of this generation, I watched as women were subjected to propaganda, starting in junior high (today's middle school) that shaped their thinking. The ideas were implanted that women should think only of themselves, women all deserved "the best," men were to be used, and that men had only two main uses – entertainment and to take responsibility for women's actions (cleaning up the mess, getting the women out of jail, birth control, child support, etc.). Women were encouraged to go out and "find themselves," which was why the U.S. went from five STDs in 1982 to 38 in 1990 and 48 in 2000.
Because they were told they "deserved the best," in high school and college in the late 1980s and during the 1990s, about 20 percent of the young men were sleeping with about 80 percent of the girls.
Unfortunately, those 20 percent were generally the "bad" guys – the three "G's": jerks, jocks and gigolos – and this motif is still all too common among GenX women even today. Interestingly enough, that ratio – 4 to 1 – was also the average ratio of men to women of Oregon's college-age Christian groups during the 1990s.
To compound matters, GenX was the first generation that saw that first true schism between the awarding of scholarships and financial aid between genders and the deliberate targeting of female preference for hiring in federal and state services. The Forest Service is 85 percent female in California and 75 percent nationwide, for example. This has been purely as a result of reverse discrimination over 20 years. For every female applicant for a given position, there have been several more qualified male applicants on average. I've experienced this myself more than 1,100 times. (In recent years, this has led to a lot of white males giving up on the sciences and engineering – if you can't get a job, what's the point in going through all the work and piling up the college debt?)
It's human nature. This combination of the selfish "me only" ideology of radical feminism and the preferences in hiring and college admission/tuition/etc. has created a sort of "can't touch me" sort of feeling among some women of GenX. As well, the easy path many have had – as compared to those who worked very hard to get what they had – makes them less grateful for their positions.
GenX women are much more cavalier about sex than other age and gender groups, as well, having been largely insulated from the effects of their actions, both by societal convention, unfair and arbitrary laws and government programs. Couple that with irresponsibility. In no other age group in the United States does one find this love of evil.
Love of evil? What else does one call the inability to have fun without doing something wrong? Or extreme hardness of heart? I was 25 the first time I overheard two women of my age speaking with concern for another person. (To give an idea of how good my hearing is, I detect and track small wildlife by sound.) I don't know any other group that acts like this.
Is it any real surprise that some of these women, having been given special treatment for years, being almost divorced from the consequences of their actions from high school on, having no real moral or ethical standards, decide to prey on their students?
Thank God for GenY's women. They are working overtime to make up for the sins of GenX's women and both sexes of the baby boomers. Hope the country survives long enough for them to fix things." (Bill Hunt/WorldNetDaily.com "LETTER OF THE WEEK" 12/25/08)
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Borah Teacher Faces Additional Battery Counts
Posted
By:
Bernie
on 12/27/2008 6:28:55 AM
"Grand jury indicts Michelle Farley. She faces 8 counts of sexual relations with a male student.
A 40-year-old female psychology teacher at Borah High School accused of having sexual relationship with a 17-year-old male student between May and October is charged with eight counts of sexual battery after being indicted by an Ada County grand jury Tuesday.
Michelle Ward Farley, who has been put on paid administrative leave by the Boise School Board, is scheduled to enter a plea in the case Jan. 12 in front of 4th District Judge Thomas Neville.
Boise police arrested Farley Thursday - the same day officers were tipped off that Farley and the student had a sexual relationship. Farley admitted to detectives she had sexual contact with the boy, according to court testimony.
According to probable cause court records obtained by the Idaho Statesman, the teen told police he had as many as 15 sexual encounters with Farley between May and Oct. 30. The teen also told police the sexual activity did not occur at the school but did happen at a park close to Borah High and at Farley's home.
At the time of arrest, Farley was charged with two counts of sexual battery of a minor between the ages of 16 to 17.
Following Tuesday's secret grand jury hearing, Ada County prosecutors charged Farley with six more counts. The indictment does not accuse Farley of having intercourse with the teen but does say they had other kinds of sexual contact.
Defense attorney Chuck Peterson said during Farley's initial court appearance Friday that she will fight the charges.
Ada County Deputy Prosecutor Jean Fisher said Friday the boy was 17 in May and a student at Borah High when the sexual contact began.
Neither police nor prosecutors have said how the two met or whether the boy was one of Farley's students.
The indictment means Farley's case is moved directly to the 4th District Court, where felonies are tried. Ada County prosecutors routinely take cases involving sex crimes to the grand jury so the victims do not have to testify publicly.
The maximum penalty for the charge of sexual battery of a minor is life in prison.
Farley, who was hired by the Boise School District in August 1994, taught psychology at Borah High prior to being placed on leave and earns an annual salary of $55,971." (PATRICK ORR/IdahoStatesman.com 12/25/08)
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Borah Teacher Charged With Having Sex With Student
Posted
By:
TBird
on 12/21/2008 10:06:15 AM
"Boise Police arrested 40-year-old Michelle Farley for two counts of sexual battery of a child aged 16 or 17.
Prosecutors say the Borah High psychology teacher admitted to police she had sexual contact with a student, who was 17 at the time.
Ada County Deputy Prosecutor Jean Fisher says the alleged abuse happened between May 2008 and October 2008, but the boy just came forward this week.
Police believe sexual contact between Farley and the boy happened at least twice. They do not believe there are other victims, but Fisher says the case is still open.
"The investigation is ongoing as to potential other allegations, as well, at the school," she said.
Farley, a 13 year employee of the Boise School District, is still listed as an active member of the Borah High staff. Her husband works as an administrator with the district.
Farley has two children. During a video arraignment Thursday, a magistrate judge ordered she not have any contact with children other than her own, putting her teaching career on hold.
Farley's attorney asked the judge for a low bond. He says his client is active in the community, and unlikely to hurt anyone or take off.
"Her family is intent on providing her defense and will make sure she shows up to hearings," Chuck Peterson said. "She has no criminal history at all and there's no reason to beleive she would flee. She has no where to go. Her contacts are here, they are local, and there are many,"
A judge set Farley's bond at $10,000. Peterson said she planned to bail out of jail.
If convicted, Farley could face up to life in prison." (KIVITV.com 12/19/08)
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Jordan High Teacher Arrested On Sexual Assault Charges
Posted
By:
TBird
on 12/21/2008 10:04:11 AM
"A Jordan High School teacher has been arrested on multiple sexual assault charges.
Claire Richards, 35, was arrested and charged Friday morning with two counts of sexual assault on a person in custody, four counts of interference with custody and 17 counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, according to jail records.
She was booked into the Muscogee County jail at 1 p.m. Friday. Bond was set at $17,500.
Richards made bond about 4 p.m. Friday.
She is scheduled to appear in Recorder’s Court Monday at 8 a.m.
The Muscogee County School District and the Columbus Police Department have been investigating reports of an inappropriate relationship between a teacher and a 16-year-old male student at Jordan High School for several weeks.
School district spokeswoman Valerie Fuller said Richards has been employed by the Muscogee County School District since August 2001.
She started as a math teacher at Carver High School and was transferred to Jordan at the beginning of this school year.
She has been placed in an administrative position in the district pending the outcome of the investigation, Fuller said." (Sara Pauff/Ledger-Enquirer.com 12/20/08)
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'Cougars' Preying In The Classroom
Posted
By:
TBird
on 12/21/2008 9:47:06 AM
Why are so many female teachers targeting boys for sexual abuse?
"In the wake of one the most publicized stories of a female teacher sexually abusing an underage student, the case of the beautiful Debra LaFave, MSNBC anchor Contessa Brewer asked a psychologist TV guest "why someone who looks like a living Barbie Doll would need to have sex with a young kid."
LaFave was 23 years old in 2004 when it was discovered that she had been having sex with her student, a 14-year-old boy.
At the time, LaFave became a media sensation for her stunning good looks and the story – a woman seeking the sexual attention of a barely adolescent boy – that so crossed up society's expectations of who sex offenders are and what they look like.
National statistics, however, demonstrate that LaFave's case is far from unusual.
According to a major 2004 study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education – the most authoritative investigation to date – nearly 10 percent of U.S. public school students have been targeted with unwanted sexual attention by school employees, and in those cases, 40 percent of the perpetrators were women.
Titled "Educator Sexual Misconduct: A Synthesis of Existing Literature" by Virginia Commonwealth University Professor Charol Shakeshaft, the report brought to light staggering statistics.
Compare the numbers with the much-publicized Catholic Church scandal.
A study by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops concluded 10,667 young people were sexually mistreated by priests between 1950 and 2002.
Shakeshaft's study, however, estimates that roughly 290,000 students experienced some sort of physical sexual abuse by a public school employee between 1991 and 2000 alone.
If female employees are responsible for 40 percent of those crimes, that means America could be facing an average of more than 11,000 instances of women abusing students in school each year – in other words, more cases in one year than were reported in 50 years of Catholic priest abuse.
Why would so many trusted teachers, even young, vibrant, beautiful women like Debra LaFave, target children for sexual abuse?
WND spoke with some of the nation's leading experts in the field – including Shakeshaft – for answers to why female teachers would prey on boys and what can be done about it.
Teacher outside, teenager inside
"There's a range of reasons these women are abusing boys," Shakeshaft told WND, "not just one."
"One of the reasons is because they can, because we haven't done in schools what we need to do to stop this from happening," Shakeshaft said. "A second reason is because they are in power positions, and they abuse power just as males abuse power."
Shakeshaft told WND, however, that most of the women who aren't hardened predators – including perplexing cases like LaFave's, where a woman may only grow attached to one boy and wouldn't dream of sexually abusing others – rationalize their romantic fixation because, inside, the teacher feels like a teenager herself.
"Most of these people who cross boundaries have arrested emotional development," Shakeshaft said. "They're putting themselves into the same peer group as their students.
"What they say is, 'I think this person is just the same as I am,'" Shakeshaft explained. "Though they wouldn't say it out loud, they rationalize that the child is really more like a 40-year-old, or that that they are really more like a teenager."
In a 2006 interview with NBC's Matt Lauer, LaFave demonstrated Shakeshaft's explanation.
"The only way that I can describe that is that I felt that I was a peer of theirs," LaFave confessed. "I was just thinking of it as being a young girl who just got caught with her boyfriend."
When played a recording of a phone call LaFave made to her student, she acknowledged of her giggling adolescent demeanor: "That sounds so childish. … That's not something an adult would say."
Gary Schoener, executive director of the Walk-In Counseling Center in Minneapolis and one of the nation's foremost pioneers in working with sex offenders, agrees that many of these teachers see themselves as peers with the teens they abuse, but warns there may be other factors as well.
How she sees him
"These cases have a lot of variety to them," Schoener told WND. "The women are not all the same, and they don't all fit a pattern."
Schoener is a licensed psychologist who has worked for decades with teachers who sexually abuse their students. Along with former WICC Clinic Director John Gonsiorek, Schoener developed one of the first and most widely respected tools for assessing professionals – therapists, clergy, teachers and others – caught in sexual misconduct.
"What does the woman see in the boy?" Schoener pondered. "Obviously you have some where [the students] are 17 years old and they're mature for their age, at least physically, and you can more readily see how somebody could develop fantasies.
"But then when you get the 14-year-old boy who is immature, why did this woman who was married, who was not known to have marital problems, who had kids, why would she go in this direction?" Schoener asked.
"Most of these women don't know the answer," Schoener explained. "But if you ask them what they're feeling, they would say, 'This kid is the most honest person I've met in my life. He's much more honest than adult males.' What you hear a lot from women is very similar to what you hear from men who prefer girls: that they're pure, that they're innocent."
Schoener explained that the teachers exhibit thoughts and patterns very similar to a psychological fallacy called counter-transference, which is when a caregiver in authority – such as a therapist or a teacher – connects with some virtue in the subject, but then distorts that into a romanticized idealization based more on the caregiver's own projection than on reality.
"They absolutely romanticize this young kid," Schoener said, "and somehow in their mind make him into this sensitive, caring, thoughtful, honest, insightful ideal."
But, Schoener explained, "Each of these things they're describing and they feel very strongly are not things that could have come from actual experience with the kid. … These are gut feelings. In this context of the teacher-student relationship, somehow the kid becomes bigger than life, and they react to him like their great, fantasied love."
Scheoner told WND that the one factor he sees in the vast majority of cases where female teachers abuse boys is fantasy about the student's character that does not match what others observe.
"It is very much driven by emotional connection, rather than sexual drive," Schoener said. "In a huge number of the cases we've seen – not all, some are largely sexual – the thing was driven by a fantasy where the kid was seen as this wonderful human being and age ceased to matter. In fact, reality ceased to matter."
"The sexual turn-on is not the first thing that occurs," Schoener summarized. "It begins with an emotional fixation on a kid. After that, chances they take don't matter any more. They risk careers. They do crazy things like planning on how they'll live together after the wedding. They get in trouble for the sex, but it started with irrational feelings and thoughts."
What's the harm?
When LaFave's story broke in the news, as has happened with other stories of attractive teachers sexually abusing their male students, some questioned whether the boys were truly harmed. After all, it was argued, many teenage boys would see the wooing of a beautiful woman as a good thing, regardless of her age.
Following another publicized case of teacher abuse, Steven B. Blum, a consulting psychologist to a sex offender program in Nebraska, explained teenage boys don't always see the harm initially.
"Generally the male doesn't feel victimized," Blum told the Los Angeles Times. "A lot of teenage boys would see that as their lucky day."
But the 16-year-old victim of Margaret De Barraicua, a 30-year-old California teacher who pleaded guilty to four counts of statutory rape, did not consider it his "lucky day."
"I'm not the same boy," the student said in a letter read in court in Sacramento. "At school I became the center of attention. Everyone knew my name." The boy was so traumatized, his mother wrote in a letter read in court, that "his hair is falling out."
The father of a Colorado boy molested by Silvia Johnson – who held drug-alcohol-and-sex parties at her home with teenaged schoolboys to be "cool" – told the court the 40-year-old woman "took away my best friend, my hunting buddy. I can't have him back now. He is gone."
Experts agree that, in time, even willing teenage boys coaxed into sex by their authority figures, no matter how attractive, exhibit abused child symptoms.
"Boys and girls who are put in these situations aren't emotionally ready to deal with all the complexities of these relationships," Shakeshaft told WND.
"The lasting effect is very similar to the effects on females: they don't trust people, they have trouble forming intimate relationships, they often feel used, exploited, dirty, ashamed," Shakeshaft explained. "And that often leads to dysfunction in other areas – drug abuse, alcohol abuse, and particularly inability to have intimate relationships."
Dr. Richard B. Gartner, a leading expert and specialist in field of treating men with history of sexual abuse, writes in a commentary on his website, "Many sexually abused boys grow up distrustful, considering people dishonest, malevolent, and undependable. They often become frightened of emotional connection and isolate themselves."
"Confusing affection with abuse, desire with tenderness," Gartner writes, "sexually abused boys often become men who have difficulty distinguishing among sex, love, nurturance, affection, and abuse. They may experience friendly interpersonal approaches as seductive and manipulative. On the other hand, they may not notice when exploitative demands are made on them – they've learned to see these as normal and acceptable."
Shakeshaft told WND, "Historically, if a boy mentioned it, it was not seen as abuse, it was seen as, 'You should be so lucky.' I think that's changing. I think we're seeing a change in that double standard; I think we're seeing people understanding that the issues are the same whether it's a male or a female."
What can be done?
The answer to stopping teachers who prey on their students sexually may be as complex as the answer to what's causing it.
For Shakeshaft, who specializes in educational leadership, the answer is teaching people to spot the warning signs.
"A lot of teachers, if they understood the patterns, would be able to identify them in their colleagues," Shakeshaft told WND. "We hear from other teachers, 'I always suspected something, I was always uncomfortable – I just wasn't sure.' What they didn't have was that body of knowledge that would have led them to identify what was going on."
Shakeshaft warned that fixated predators may be too sly to spot, but with close supervision and a swift, knowledgeable response, the education community may be able to help teachers who are about to cross the line.
"If we keep aware of what these signals are," Shakeshaft said, "we are more likely to be able to intervene and stop them."
Schoener, however, believes the best defense may come from parents.
"I don't think from the teacher end it's very easy to spot," Schoener told WND. Instead, he suggested parents be watchful of how much interchange their children are having with school officials.
"The first warning sign is a kid spending a lot of private time with the teacher," Schoener said. "The second: text messaging and emails that go back and forth. At the grade school, junior high, high school level, most teachers are discouraged from a lot of Internet interaction. Frequent emailing and text messaging are questionable. It would be a rare occasion where a teacher would need to be in that level of contact with a student."
Schoener also warned that parents be clear on the purpose and the chaperoning of all field trips and events outside of school.
Finally, Schoener said, the boundaries of a teacher's role need to be clearly set.
"A teacher's job is not to counsel students past a point," Schoener explained. "Even if the kid really needs help and it's legitimate counseling, it's rare that a teacher should be doing a lot of counseling. That's the school counselor's job. If there are a lot of private meetings, you have to ask yourself what's going on."
But for David Kupelian, WND's managing editor and author of "The Marketing of Evil," the ultimate answer – beyond the necessary watching for warning signs – is rooted in a society that has lost its spiritual moorings.
In an award-winning 2006 Whistleblower article, Kupelian wrote, "Without the understanding of our spiritual origin and destiny – of who we are and what purpose our maker intended for us – we can't possibly understand sex and its intended role in our lives. Instead, all we have driving us are the desires, physical and emotional 'needs,' cravings and compulsions we find welling up from within us."
In her interview with WND, Shakeshaft bolstered Kupelian's point.
"Part of the problem is bad judgment; part of it is narcissistic behavior, in other words, 'What I want I should get,'" Shakeshaft said.
"The focus here for [these teachers] is that they're looking out for their own needs and not the needs of their kids," Shakeshaft said. "What they're interested in is getting what they want, not doing what they need to do to make sure the students they have are safe. The common denominator is focus on self, focus on their own needs, focus on their own desires."
"That is America today," Kupelian wrote. "In what was once the finest and most robust expression of Western Judeo-Christian civilization and the core values underlying it, most of us, too, have forgotten. … Forgotten the simple, intuitive understanding of right and wrong that we grasped effortlessly when we were innocent children, but which we were later intimidated or seduced into doubting – and abandoning. Forgotten the core truth about man's condition – that he is in reality a 'fallen' being, 'born in sin,' and that his sexual urges must be channeled into marriage."
Kupelian concluded of all the reasons female teachers seek sexual or romantic gratification in children, the largest contributing factor may be a secularized society that has lost a sound basis for teaching both morality and the self-control to exercise it.
"An even more important factor in this sexual-predator epidemic is the fact that 'right' and 'wrong' just aren't real to most of us anymore," Kupelian wrote. "Even if [a female teacher] was attracted sexually to a child, for whatever reasons, it's still wrong to have sex with a 13-year-old. And knowing something is wrong is enough reason not to do it – even if part of us wants to." (Drew Zahn/WorldNetDaily.com 12/20/08)
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Ex-Teacher's Aide Now Pleads Guilty To Sex
Posted
By:
TBird
on 12/21/2008 9:42:22 AM
"(AP) ¯ A former teacher's aide from Crookston has pleaded guilty to charges that she had sex with a 14-year-old boy.
Thirty-nine-year-old Kellie Ann Cormican entered guilty pleas Wednesday to five counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct which occurred in August, September and November of 2007.
As part of a plea deal, five charges of first-degree criminal sexual conduct were dropped.
According to the complaint, she told police that she thought the boy was 16, not 14.
Cormican testified that she is receiving counseling and is on medication. She remains free on bond. Sentencing is scheduled for Feb. 2.
Cormican worked for the Crookston school district for two years starting in 2004 as a special education paraprofessional. Her contract was not renewed for reasons unrelated to the case." (WCCO.com 12/18/08)
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Teacher At School For The Deaf Charged With Sexually Assaulting Student
Posted
By:
Liberty
on 9/27/2008 8:10:59 AM
"A former teacher at the American School for the Deaf in West Hartford was charged this morning with sexually assaulting a student, police said.
Julie A. Denno, 27, of Ballston, N.Y. was arrested on a warrant charging her with second-degree sexual assault and impairing the morals of a minor, police said. Her bail was set at $75,000, and she was scheduled to be arraigned today in Superior Court in Bristol.
Police said the sexual assaults occurred during a two-month period at Denno's Bristol home on North Pond Street. She no longer lives at the address, Lt. Edward Spyros said.
He wouldn't say the age of the student -- a boy -- to protect his identity, he said.
Denno was fired when administrators at the school learned of the investigation months ago, said Marilyn Rettig, the school's director of institutional advancement.
"The safety and well-being of our students is our top priority, and we take swift action when warranted," Rettig said." (CHRISTINE DEMPSEY/Courant.com 9/26/08)
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Teacher Arrested For Alleged Sex With Student During School
Posted
By:
Liberty
on 9/27/2008 8:09:01 AM
"Police arrested a math teacher who allegedly had sex with a student while school was in session.
Portland High School math teacher Sandra Binkley turned herself into police Thursday. She was charged with statutory rape by an authority figure for allegedly having sex with a 17-year-old student on campus during school hours.
"He said she was okay, she was real nice," said Fred Rogan, quoting how his son described the teacher. "He said she was real friendly."
Al West of the Portland Police Department said Binkley had sexual relations with a student in March.
Investigators found about the case after the teenager told his parents, who reported the incident to school administrators this week.
"The Sumner County School District will not tolerate the type of behavior alleged in this incident for any of its employees," said Jeremy Johnson, Sumner County Schools spokesman.
"My son called and told me what had happened and I was very upset," Rogan said.
Rogan isn't the only parent concerned about the situation.
"You send your child to school and they're there all day," said Melissa McBride, another parent. "You have to trust that school is going to take care of them. So, yeah, you worry about it. You do."
Police said this is an isolated incident no other victims have come forward.
Binkley was suspended without pay until the incident is resolved. The school district is considering providing counseling for some of the students at the high school." (NewsChannel5.com 9/25/08)
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Former Narcoossee Community School Teacher Pleads Guilty In Student Sex
Posted
By:
DAD
on 9/15/2008 9:20:22 AM
"A former Narcoossee Community School teacher pleaded guilty today to one count of sexual activity with a child 16 or 17 for having a relationship with an underage former student.
Sarah Joel, 31, of St. Cloud will be sentenced Nov. 7.
The investigation began in January after a Harmony High School teacher alerted authorities that one of her students might have had sex with his former teacher. The student told Osceola County deputy sheriffs that he and Joel stayed in touch after the last school year and the encounters took place at her St. Cloud home.
Joel first denied having sex but later admitted to the encounters, according to an arrest report.
She was hired in 2006 and worked as a special-education teacher. The Osceola County School Board terminated her employment this year." (Sarah Lundy/OrlandoSentinel.com 9/12/08)
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Female Teacher, 60, Has Threesome With Students 17, 14
Posted
By:
DOC
on 6/27/2008 7:51:59 AM
'Efficient' instructor arrested on 15 counts of unlawful sex with inmate minors
"A 60-year-old science teacher at the Brevard County Juvenile Detention Center in Florida has been arrested and charged with 15 counts of unlawful sex with minors and one count of filing a false police report.
Palm Bay police said Adrienne Laflamme told her 17-year-old student to conceal their sexual liaisons, including a threesome with a third student, and drug use so she wouldn't lose her job, the Orlando Sentinel reported.
"This woman's actions are an absolute disgrace," Detective Jasmine Campbell said. "We have reason to believe there are other victims and it's important that they come forward."
Laflamme is just the latest instructor to make WND's big list of American teachers accused or convicted of having sexual relations with students. She reportedly began the four-week heated affair with the inmate student within days of his release. The boy's mother said the teacher regularly picked the boy up from their home to have sex with him at her own residence.
The affair continued for several weeks, and Laflamme had sex with the student at least 15 times, including one threesome with a 14-year-old boy.
The teacher, away on vacation, loaned her vehicle to the boy. She filed a police report claiming the vehicle was stolen after learning police were investigating her.
Laflamme was allowed a police-monitored phone call to the student. She told the boy she had been suspended from her position and that she was going to deny allegations of sexual abuse. Laflamme suggested he conceal their drug use so she could keep her position and retirement pension.
Brevard County school spokesman Wesley Sumner told the Sentinel Laflamme's evaluations described her as "an efficient teacher" with no complaints in her file.
The 22-year veteran teacher has been put on paid administrative leave until a criminal investigation can be completed, a juvenile detention center spokesman said. Her bond is set at $225,000." (WorldNetDaily 6/26/08)
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Steamy MySpace Page For Molesting Babe Teacher – In Jail!
Posted
By:
BullsEye
on 6/11/2008 5:24:47 PM
'Pamela' offers provocative photos of scantily clad ex-instructor posing in classroom
"A former elementary school teacher and registered sex offender who pleaded no contest to having intercourse and oral sex with a 13-year-old student now has a new MySpace page in her name. The profile recently featured photos of nude women and the ex-physical education instructor doing a striptease on video.
The page says "Pamela" is a former teacher who is looking to make a new name for herself in the entertainment industry. When WND contacted a person claiming to be Pamela Rogers Turner through the profile, she spoke about pursuing her new career and pictures she had taken in provocative poses.
"Well I have some sexy teacher photos of me that were done recently," the person said. "They are of me in lingerie by a desk with blackboard in back etc. I'm just real confused on where to go with all this."
When asked for an interview instead of racy pictures, the individual responded, "No I would rather not do a whole life story right now … not ready … probably never will anyways."
Rogers Turner is just one on WND's big list of scores of female teachers who have had sex with students in recent years.
If the person is in fact her, it would not have been the first time Rogers Turner has offered to send sexy photos online. In February 2005, she pleaded no contest to having a sex with a 13-year-old student at Centertown Elementary School in McMinnville, Tenn., and served 198 days of an eight-year sentence before paying a $50,000 bond and being released. Circuit Judge Bart Stanley prohibited contact with the victim or use of the Internet as a condition of parole.
However, Rogers Turner admitted to creating a now-deleted MySpace page, messaging the boy through his code name "Number 32" (his basketball jersey number) and sending him several provocative and nude photos and videos of herself while she was on parole. After initially charging her with 13 counts of statutory rape and 15 counts of sexual battery by an authority figure, prosecutors found evidence of her continued relationship with the boy through the social network. She was sent back to jail and is serving the full term of her original sentence plus an additional two years for violating her parole by contacting the minor.
Now, a new MySpace profile has emerged under her name with photos and personal information about Rogers Turner, describing her as a single, Christian female who would like to have children "someday."
"I'm just your normal 30 year old woman, well sort of," it says. "As most of you know things have been complacated [sic] for me for some time now. But I am looking forward to making a new life for myself and all the new adventures that come with it. And just so you will remember me ... " A video of her dancing provocatively in black lingerie follows.
At the time of her original arrest, Rogers Turner had been married only 11 months to a high school basketball coach named Christopher Turner. He filed for divorce shortly after she was arrested for having sex with the young student.
A telling statement at the top of the profile page declares, "Yes I am the one your mother warned you about."
The warden of the Tennessee Prison for Women declined to comment on whether inmates are allowed access to the Internet and MySpace. While the identity of the person managing the page is uncertain, photos of nude women were removed from the profile immediately following WND's repeated phone calls to the women's prison.
The profile lists 31 "friends," all males who describe themselves as legal adults, and claims her favorite movie is "The Notebook" because it mirrors a similar situation in her own love life.
"[I]t is based on a true story and who doesn't enjoy happy endings?" the entry says. "Also, there are many love stories that can be compared because something interfered and they were not over … and still are not over today. I guess only time will tell if they will one day be together … There is someone that I am referring to, and they know who they are."
Rogers Turner's February request for parole has been denied, and her official release date is Oct. 29, 2014 – when the teenage victim is set to turn 22 years old." (Chelsea Schilling/WorldNetDaily 6/9/08)
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Steamy MySpace Page For Molesting Babe Teacher – In Jail!
Posted
By:
Caxy
on 6/10/2008 5:05:27 PM
'Pamela' offers provocative photos of scantily clad ex-instructor posing in classroom
"A former elementary school teacher and registered sex offender who pleaded no contest to having intercourse and oral sex with a 13-year-old student now has a new MySpace page in her name. The profile recently featured photos of nude women and the ex-physical education instructor doing a striptease on video.
The page says "Pamela" is a former teacher who is looking to make a new name for herself in the entertainment industry. When WND contacted a person claiming to be Pamela Rogers Turner through the profile, she spoke about pursuing her new career and pictures she had taken in provocative poses.
"Well I have some sexy teacher photos of me that were done recently," the person said. "They are of me in lingerie by a desk with blackboard in back etc. I'm just real confused on where to go with all this."
When asked for an interview instead of racy pictures, the individual responded, "No I would rather not do a whole life story right now … not ready … probably never will anyways."
Rogers Turner is just one on WND's big list of scores of female teachers who have had sex with students in recent years.
If the person is in fact her, it would not have been the first time Rogers Turner has offered to send sexy photos online. In February 2005, she pleaded no contest to having a sex with a 13-year-old student at Centertown Elementary School in McMinnville, Tenn., and served 198 days of an eight-year sentence before paying a $50,000 bond and being released. Circuit Judge Bart Stanley prohibited contact with the victim or use of the Internet as a condition of parole.
However, Rogers Turner admitted to creating a now-deleted MySpace page, messaging the boy through his code name "Number 32" (his basketball jersey number) and sending him several provocative and nude photos and videos of herself while she was on parole. After initially charging her with 13 counts of statutory rape and 15 counts of sexual battery by an authority figure, prosecutors found evidence of her continued relationship with the boy through the social network. She was sent back to jail and is serving the full term of her original sentence plus an additional two years for violating her parole by contacting the minor.
Now, a new MySpace profile has emerged under her name with photos and personal information about Rogers Turner, describing her as a single, Christian female who would like to have children "someday."
"I'm just your normal 30 year old woman, well sort of," it says. "As most of you know things have been complacated [sic] for me for some time now. But I am looking forward to making a new life for myself and all the new adventures that come with it. And just so you will remember me ... " A video of her dancing provocatively in black lingerie follows.
At the time of her original arrest, Rogers Turner had been married only 11 months to a high school basketball coach named Christopher Turner. He filed for divorce shortly after she was arrested for having sex with the young student.
A telling statement at the top of the profile page declares, "Yes I am the one your mother warned you about."
The warden of the Tennessee Prison for Women declined to comment on whether inmates are allowed access to the Internet and MySpace. While the identity of the person managing the page is uncertain, photos of nude women were removed from the profile immediately following WND's repeated phone calls to the women's prison.
The profile lists 31 "friends," all males who describe themselves as legal adults, and claims her favorite movie is "The Notebook" because it mirrors a similar situation in her own love life.
"It is based on a true story and who doesn't enjoy happy endings?" the entry says. "Also, there are many love stories that can be compared because something interfered and they were not over … and still are not over today. I guess only time will tell if they will one day be together … There is someone that I am referring to, and they know who they are."
Rogers Turner's February request for parole has been denied, and her official release date is Oct. 29, 2014 – when the teenage victim is set to turn 22 years old." (Chelsea Schilling/WorldNetDaily 6/9/08)
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Eugene Teacher Charged With Rape Of Student
Posted
By:
Prince
on 6/9/2008 11:03:13 PM
(AP) - A 24-year-old woman working as a substitute teacher at a Eugene middle school has been charged with rape after she was accused of having sex with a male student.
Sarah Jayne Bridges was arrested Friday evening after police received a complaint Friday morning from the Eugene School District alleging she engaged in sexual activity with a student in March while off campus.
School officials said Bridges taught at all four high schools in the district this year in addition to the middle school. She had been a substitute since September 2006.
Her teaching privileges were suspended and she was being held at the Lane County Jail. Police said they are not aware of any other victims.
The Eugene 4J School District sent out the following press release about the matter:
"Substitute teacher Sarah Jayne Bridges was arrested Friday, June 6 at 7:30 p.m., at the Eugene Police Department, on charges of Rape in the Third Degree, Sodomy in the Third Degree and Sexual Abuse in the Third Degree. She was lodged in the Lane County Jail.
A complaint was made by Eugene School District 4J to the Eugene Police Department on Friday morning alleging Bridges, 24, had sexual activity with a male student. The complaint alleged Bridges had the encounter in March of 2008, with her former student, who is currently in middle school. The alleged activity occurred off campus.
Bridges has been a substitute teacher in the Eugene School District since September 2006. She may have substituted in other districts as well. She taught 66 days in 4J schools in 2006-07, and has taught a total of 85.5 days in 4J this school year.
The district suspended her substitute teaching privileges upon notification of the allegations Friday. After contacting police, district administrators reported the allegations to the Oregon Teacher Standards and Practices Commission, the state body responsible for issuing teaching licenses. A conviction on these charges would mean an automatic loss of teaching license.
During the 2007-08 school year, she has taught at the following 4J schools: Churchill, Sheldon, North Eugene and South Eugene high schools; Kelly, Madison, Monroe, and Roosevelt middle schools; and the K-8 Arts and Technology Academy at Jefferson. Subjects she has covered include science, language arts, French, Japanese, art, social studies, physical education, math, home economics and general elementary education."
An EPD press release said detectives are not aware of any other victims. In the event anyone has further information, they are asked to contact Detective Dan Braziel at 682-5836." (KATU.com 6/7/08)
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Holton Pleads Guilty
Posted
By:
Prince
on 6/9/2008 10:54:20 PM
Former substitute teacher had student, 15, perform oral sex on him at school
"Defendant Dionn Holton, 32, pleads guilty during a preliminary hearing at Long Beach Superior Courthouse on Thursday. The former substitute teacher and volunteer basketball coach is accused of having a 15-year-old student perform oral sex on him on two different occasions at the Cabrillo High School campus during school hours last fall. (Kevin Chang / For the Press-Telegram)LONG BEACH - A former substitute teacher and volunteer basketball coach pleaded guilty Thursday to charges that he had a 15-year-old boy perform oral sex on him at school last year.
In a stunning reversal, 32-year-old Dionn Holton pleaded to both felony counts filed last month by Deputy District Attorney Robert Hight.
No deals were offered to the defendant and he faces a maximum sentence of three years, eight months in state prison when he is sentenced April 24, Hight said.
Leonard Matsuck, Holton's attorney, had no comment after the hearing and Holton and his family left immediately after the proceedings.
Although he has no prior convictions, the felony charge typically requires a defendant to serve time in state prison. However, Holton and his attorney have asked for a psychological review to be conducted before sentencing, Hight said.
If the psychologist finds that probation would be a better option, and if the sentencing judge agrees, Holton could avoid serving time, Hight said.
But he must register as a sex offender for the rest of his life and submit a DNA sample for a criminal database, the prosecutor added.
Holton was softspoken in Judge James Otto's courtroom at the Long Beach Superior Court and was barely audible when he answered by saying "guilty" to both counts.
He was so quiet that Judge Otto had to gently remind him that his responses had to be out loud so that the court reporter could take them down for the record.
Holton was convicted of having a Cabrillo High School sophomore perform oral sex on campus during school hours in October and December.
The husband and father of four was working at the high school as a substitute teacher at the time. He was employed in the school district's substitute pool from 2000 until his arrest in January, according to school officials.
When district officials were notified of the investigation and charges, Holton was fired from his position.
The former Poly CIF basketball champion was also removed from his position as a volunteer coach for Millikan High School's varsity boys basketball team and was removed from his part-time position with the Long Beach Parks, Recreation and Marine Department, where he worked as a coach with children at Silverado Park and the Springdale Housing Facility, the housing project where he grew up.
Although Holton declined to comment on the case in previous court appearances, his family and friends vehemently denied the charge and swore his innocence.
Dozens of supporters came with him to his first court appearances, packing courtroom galleries. Only four people came with Holton to court Thursday, including his mother. They all left with Holton immediately after the proceedings led by Holton's attorney.
"He's gone," Matsuck said when asked if Holton or his family wished to comment. "No comment."
Evangelist Darlene Anderson of Christ Second Baptist Church was one of only a few people who went on the record with her support of Holton following one of his February court appearances.
Anderson's son grew up playing basketball with Holton, as did many other people in her close-knit community and at her church. Never, in the 30-plus years that she has known him, has such an issue been raised, she said.
"There's no way it could have happened," Anderson said in February. "He is innocent, beyond a shadow of a doubt." (Tracy Manzer/PressTelegram.com 3/20/08)
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Coral Springs Private School Teacher Accused Of Sex With Student
Posted
By:
Prince
on 6/9/2008 10:46:52 PM
"A Lauderhill woman who taught 11th and 12th graders at a private Coral Springs school was arrested Friday after police learned she had been involved in a sexual relationship with one of her male students for more than a year, authorities said.
Christine Brown Jouini, 38, a teacher at the Center Academy in Coral Springs, is accused of repeatedly having sex with the student at her former apartment in Margate and other locations off campus between June 2006 and September 2007, police said.
Jouini, who faces three counts of unlawful sexual activity with a minor, is being held in the Broward County Jail without bond.
"It was consensual," said Margate police spokesman Chip Kolenda. "It wasn't until our detectives spoke to him that he admitted to the relationship. He never actually came forward."
The Center Academy, at 4700 Riverside Drive, is described as a "small, safe, accredited college prep environment for students who have fallen behind or who want to get ahead," according to the school's Web site.
The school has been family-operated since 1968, and is one of 13 in Florida, the Web site said.
School director Gail Levy could not be reached for comment Friday, despite repeated attempts by phone.
Margate police began their investigation after the victim recently confided to another teacher that he had previously had a sexual relationship with Jouini, Kolenda said.
That teacher notified the state child abuse hotline, Kolenda said.
According to police, the boy said the relationship began when he was 16 years old.
He said he and Jouini had "sexual contact" more than 100 times and he visited her apartment almost every day for almost a year, staying overnight when her husband was not home, according to a police affidavit.
Jouini introduced the boy to neighbors as her brother, the affidavit said.
During their investigation, detectives located several witnesses who had seen the student and Jouini together, away from school and also at her residence, Kolenda said.
Jouini turned herself in to Margate police on Friday without incident, Kolenda said." (Sallie James/Sun-Sentinel.com 6/6/08)
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LAKE ELSINORE: Former Teacher Sentenced In Child Molestation Case
Posted
By:
G-man
on 6/9/2008 5:10:07 PM
"A former math teacher at Lake Elsinore's Lakeside High was sentenced Friday to 240 days in jail for a sexual relationship she had with a then-15-year-old girl who was one of her students.
Franca Munoz-Juvera, 27, was placed in handcuffs and taken away to be booked after her sentencing hearing at Southwest Justice Center. Along with the jail sentence, she was placed on five years of formal probation by Judge John Monterosso.
Her twin sister ---- who was also a Lakeside High teacher ---- and her twin sister's then-girlfriend were sentenced Friday as well for helping facilitate the trysts between Munoz-Juvera and the teen.
Deputy District Attorney Jennifer Chirco asked the judge to send Munoz-Juvera to state prison for three years saying the former teacher "took advantage of a position of trust like no other."
The prosecutor said Munoz-Juvera was selfish when she took advantage of a girl who didn't know any better.
Defense attorney Rajan Maline argued that Munoz-Juvera is "the kind of person who would excel at probation," adding that "she's an extraordinary individual who made an error in her life."
Maline said his client worked hard to achieve her master's degree and teaching credential and, despite losing her ability to teach now has retrained herself and works as a pharmacy technician.
The judge mentioned that Munoz-Juvera has no criminal record whatsoever and has expressed remorse for what she did. "I have nothing to indicate it isn't genuine," Monterosso said.
"I cannot overstate how inappropriate your conduct was," Monterosso said, directly addressing Munoz-Juvera.
At the age of 15, the victim experiences "confusion at every level" and is among the most vulnerable in society, the judge said.
"You, ma'am, knew that," Monterosso said to the former teacher.
The girl's father first reported his suspicions to authorities in September 2006, telling them that his daughter had received an inappropriate e-mail from Munoz-Juvera. She was arrested in December 2006, but criminal charges were not filed until October 2007. Munoz-Juvera pleaded guilty last month.
Before Friday's sentencing, the girl's father addressed the judge, pleading for the maximum sentence. His name is not being used because of The Californian's policy to not identify victims of sex crimes.
"I hold a teacher in the same light as a judge, a deputy, a priest," he said. "I take my daughter to school and I think she's going to be safe."
He told the judge that his daughter is taking medication "and is never going to sit in a classroom again."
The prosecutor also read a letter written by the girl, detailing her depression and how what happened has affected her.
"I hated everything," the girl wrote, adding that she became even more depressed when her relationship with her teacher was reported.
"I even thought of ways of committing suicide," the girl wrote.
The victim wrote that the relationship caused her to become a "conniving" person.
"I couldn't even enjoy my prom," she wrote and, after the relationship was discovered she was restricted from using a computer, the phone or even walking her dog.
The girl wrote that what happened also led to her father losing his job and the family to lose their home.
Munoz-Juvera's twin sister, Antonia, was sentenced to 120 days in jail to be served on weekends.
"Ma'am, you are very lucky you weren't prosecuted as an aider and abettor," the judge told her, based on her involvement in helping foster the relationship between her sister and the girl.
Eileen Valerio, 20, received the same sentence as Antonia Munoz-Juvera, her former girlfriend.
Both women were ordered to begin serving their time on June 20." (JOHN HALL/NCTimes.com 6/6/08)
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Auburndale Woman Arrested In Teacher-Student Sex Case
Posted
By:
Bernie
on 6/7/2008 11:48:19 AM
"A sixth-grade middle school teacher from Auburndale is facing charges after the Polk County sheriff said she had sex with four teenage boys.
Danielle Jones, 32, had been the teacher of two of the boys at Stambaugh Middle School during the 2005-06 school year, Sheriff Grady Judd said during a news conference early this afternoon. Jones contacted the two boys during the summer of 2007 through their MySpace accounts, Judd said. Jones was 31 at the time, and the two boys were 14 and 15, Judd said.
Jones told the former students she missed them and arranged to pick them up and bring them to her house, where she had sex with both of them, investigators said.
Jones had sex with one of the students again on another date and later had sex with both of the boys at her house, Judd said. On the third occasion, the boys stayed all night, investigators said.
Jones is accused of having sex with one of the boys and his cousin, who was 16, at her home on a fourth occasion and of having sex with the second former student and his cousin, also 16, on a fifth occasion.
The relationships were kept secret until May 16, when one of the boys told somebody at the school, Judd said. Jones was put on paid administrative leave while the allegations were investigated." (MIKE WELLS/The Tampa Tribune 6/5/08)
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Prosecutors Dismiss Case Against Teacher Accused Of Molesting Student
Posted
By:
Caxy
on 6/6/2008 5:25:40 PM
Jefferson County Prosecutors dismissed a felony sex case on Monday against a substitute teacher from Northwest Valley Middle School.
"(KSDK) -- Jefferson County Prosecutors dismissed a felony sex case on Monday against a substitute teacher from Northwest Valley Middle School who was accused of molesting a 16-year-old who was a student at the school.
Prosecutors charged Amanda Miner, 28, of House Springs, with three counts of statutory rape and one count of statutory sodomy last November.
Police were led to Miner after the victim allegedly told another teacher about the relationship between himself and Miner and the school district contacted authorities.
Miner had worked for the district for more than three years when she was arrested and removed from the substitute teachers call list for what the district called "performance issues."
Investigators would not elaborate on what prompted the case dismissal other than indicating a contradiction in a witness' testimony prior to the preliminary hearing which was set for Monday in Hillsboro." (KSDK.com 6/3/08)
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Malvern Wrestling Coach, Tutor Arrested On Sex Charges
Posted
By:
Caxy
on 6/6/2008 5:22:22 PM
"A Louisville man who was a wrestling coach and a tutor at Malvern High School was arrested this morning on sex charges involving a 16-year-old girl.
Mark A. Common, 22, of 1012 Joseph St., was arrested at 10:30 a.m. today at the Brown Local School District high school on two counts of gross sexual imposition, both of which are third-degree felonies, said Carroll County Sheriff Dale Williams. He was booked into the Carroll County Jail and held without bond pending a 3 p.m. hearing.
Common was accused in two separate incidents, one of which allegedly occurred at the girl's home and the other in a rural area in the county, Williams said.
District Superintendent Connie Griffin said Common was a Title I tutor, which is an instructional tutor paid out of federal funds. His job was to teach students who may be having difficulty in the classroom and with testing. He also served as a wrestling coach.
Griffin confirmed that it was Common's first year at the school.
And it is his last.
"Basically, Mark was on one-year limited contracts for both the coaching and tutoring, and those contracts were automatically non-renewed," she said. "He will not be hired back next year." The determination was made in April when the contracts were reviewed, prior to the alleged incidents, she said.
"At this point we're aware of the investigation. We're aware of the arrest ,and we really have no information. But we are cooperating with the authorities, and we will cooperate with them throughout their investigation."
The school's Web site lists Thursday as the last day of the 2007-2008 school year." (LORI MONSEWICZ/CantonRep.com 6/3/08)
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Teacher 'Wanted To Be Boy's Sex Slave'
Posted
By:
G-man
on 6/1/2008 9:35:07 AM
"A FEMALE teacher who allegedly told a 15-year-old male student to treat her like a sex slave has been charged with sexually penetrating a child.
Nazira Rafei, 25, a Melbourne high school teacher, is charged with one count of sexually penetrating a child under 16 and four counts of an indecent act with a child under 16.
The incidents allegedly occurred at Roxburgh Park, in Melbourne's outer north, in February and March this year.
Police also accuse the teacher of making an unwarranted demand by harassing the student last Monday not to disclose the relationship.
During a brief hearing at the Melbourne Magistrates Court yesterday, Rafei's lawyer, Steve Pica, told the court that the case was "likely to attract a fair degree of media attention".
"I do want to place on the record that my client has been fully co-operative with police and is pleading not guilty," he said.
Rafei was not required to formally enter a plea.
Police allege Rafei had sexual intercourse with a child under her "care, supervision or authority". It is alleged that on one occasion the teacher told the student to "treat her like a sex slave" as she lay on top of him pinching his nipples in the back seat of her car.
Another charge relates to Rafei allegedly kissing the student on his lips and touching his genitals through clothing. Two other charges relate to her allegedly hugging in a "sexual context" and kissing on the mouth a child under 16 in her care.
Magistrate Felicity Broughton adjourned the case for committal mention on August 29. Rafei made no comment as she left court.
It is the second time in two years a teacher at a Roxburgh Park school has been accused of performing sex acts on a student. In July 2006, Roxburgh College teacher Natalina D'Addario, 37, of Kensington, was sentenced to four months' jail for having sex with a 15-year-old boy." (Daniel Fogarty/TheAge.com 5/31/08)
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Teacher Apologizes For Having Sex With Student
Posted
By:
BullsEye
on 5/20/2008 1:51:12 PM
A former Lisbon English teacher tearfully apologized in St. Lawrence County Court Monday to the teenage student with whom she carried on a sexual affair.
Christel Gravlin was sentenced to four months in jail and ten years probation on a felony charge of third-degree rape.
During sentencing, Gravlin told the student she was sorry for dragging him into her problems and suggesting he was to blame for the sexual liaison.
The 33 year old teacher pleaded guilty in March.
Gravlin had oral sex and intercourse with a 15 year old male student in her home on November 25, 2007.
As a felon, Gravlin must surrender her New York state teaching license." (WWNYTV.net 5/19/08)
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Lenoir City High School Teacher Resigns After Allegations Of Inappropriate Relationship
Posted
By:
FlyBoy
on 5/7/2008 1:37:28 PM
"(WVLT) -- A teacher in Lenoir City has resigned amid allegations she had an inappropriate relationship with an 18-year-old male student.
Lenoir City School Superintendent Wayne Miller says the teacher, Rachael Burkhart, resigned after Miller approached her about her alleged affair with an 18 year old student.
Miller clearly was not happy and it shows in a news news release, and plenty of other people are just as upset.
Lenoir City High School is the latest to see a teacher depart in a scandal. 25-year-old Rachael Burkhart resigned after being confronted with allegations she had an affair with the 18-year-old student.
Lenoir City parent Susie Heath says, "I'm outraged."
For parents like Heath, the idea of a high school teacher involved with a student is disturbing. It's forced her to talk to her own middle school daughter about it.
Heath says, "I talk to her about it now, about what's appropriate and what's inappropriate. I would hope that she'll never have to face something like that."
We took a look at Burkhart's employment file. She's worked at the high school for two years. Her record before this appears clean, with no allegations in the file. Superitendent Wayne Miller would not talk on camera. He did issue a letter with some strong words, saying:
"When an incident such as this happens, it undermines the foundation of what every teacher should stand for. It breaches the trust that teachers spend their entire career nurturing and offends everyone associated with education. It saddens me when one teacher has the ability to so negatively impact our community. I will continue to work diligently to assure this does not happen in the future and would like to assure all parents that any behavior such as this will not be tolerated within our schools."
Heather Jenkins, who has a brother at the high school now, says there's nothing new about this problem, but it's time for these incidents to stop.
Jenkins says, "A teacher ought to be the superior, they ought to know better."
Because the student is 18, Police Chief Don White says there are no criminal charges and no investigation.
We tried to contact Burkhart to give her a chance to respond, but she has not returned our call.
First on VolunteerTV.com
A Lenoir City High School teacher has resigned amid a school district investigation into allegations she had an inappropriate relationship with a student.
Rachael Burkhart, 25, resigned last Thursday after Lenoir City Superintendent Wayne Miller informed her of his decision to fire her.
According to a news release issued when Volunteer TV News' Rob Pratt asked Miller about the incident, a member of the high school administration informed Miller on that same day of Burkhart's alleged involvement with an 18 year old student.
According to the release Miller verified the incident. He says it's an isolated incident.
"I have dealt with this particular incident and will move forward with closing a particularly successful school year," Miller said.
Miller notified police, but Lenoir City Police Chief Don White tells Volunteer TV News his office is not actively investigating because the student was 18 at the time of the alleged contact with Ms. Burkhart.
"When an incident such as this happens, it undermines the foundation of what every teacher should stand for," Miller continued. "It breaches the trust that teachers spend their entire career nurturing and offends everyone associated with education. It saddens me when one teacher has the ability to so negatively impact our community. I will continue to work diligently to assure this does not happen in the future and would like to assure all parents that any behavior such as this will not be tolerated within our schools." (VolunteerTV.com 5/6/08)
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Principal's Wife Charged With Sexual Assault
Posted
By:
Eagle1
on 4/3/2008 10:44:17 AM
"A Colorado high school teacher and the wife of the charter school's principal, was charged of sexual assault on a child by one in a position of trust.
Carrie McCandless, 29, is accused of having sex with a 17-year-old male student during a school-sponsored camping trip to the Rockies. McCandless turned herself into the Jefferson County Jail after a warrant was issued for her arrest by a Larimer County judge.
McCandless was an English teacher at Brighton Charter High School and wife of the school's principal, Chris McCandless. She has been fired as a teacher and faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
Brighton Police Chief Clint Blackhurst said that McCandless ended up being the only adult chaperone, after an adult male chaperone backed out at the last minute, on a student camping trip to Estes Park during the last weekend in October.
Investigators said McCandless and the 17-year-old boy ended up alone in the same room at the YMCA of the Rockies. Charges were filed after police interviewed the boy and about a dozen other witnesses." (Charles Montaldo/About.com)
Teacher in Brighton sex case jailed for violating probation
"The teacher who pleaded guilty to having a sexual relationship with a student at Brighton Collegiate High School is in jail for violating terms of her probation - namely, having unauthorized sex and testing positive for alcohol consumption.
Carrie McCandless began serving a 30- day sentence at the Larimer County Detention Center on Friday after turning herself in to Weld County probation officials.
She did not appear in court to contest the violations, according to officials with the Larimer County District Attorney's Office. McCandless waived the court appearance by signing documents dated March 13.
The sexual encounter was discovered on March 6 when a parole officer arrived at the apartment of a parolee under his supervision and found McCandless in bed. The sexual encounter violated the terms of her probation because it was not reported to or approved by McCandless' treatment team.
The encounter also resulted in a violation of the 8:30 p.m. curfew established as a term of her probation.
The probation violations related to alcohol date back to last year, officials said.
Just a month after being sentenced in June 2007 for unlawful sexual contact with a student and contributing to the delinquency of a minor, McCandless tested positive for alcohol consumption. She also missed two random alcohol tests in February.
McCandless, 32, was chaperoning a group of Brighton Collegiate High School students on a weekend trip to the YMCA of the Rockies in Estes Park in October 2006 when the sexual contact with a student occurred.
She pleaded guilty in April 2007 to two misdemeanors - unlawful sexual contact and contributing to the delinquency of a minor - and to tampering with physical evidence, a felony, and was sentenced to 45 days in jail.
Her attorney, Trent Trani, did not return calls for comment." (David Montero/Rocky Mountain News 4/1/08)
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Teacher’s Assistant Faces Sex, Drug Charges
Posted
By:
UFO
on 4/1/2008 10:55:36 PM
"A Rainier teacher's assistant faced a judge Monday on drug and sex abuse charges.
Jan Gleaves sexually abused teen boys and served them alcohol and marijuana at her apartment, Columbia County officials said.
They began investigating the case in December when a Rainier mother said she found some posts from Gleaves on her son's MySpace page.
Gleaves was a teaching assistant in the St. Helens School District.
Officials don’t think the allegations involve any kids from the school district where she worked." (KPTV.com 3/31/08)
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School Trainer Accused Of Sex With Student
Posted
By:
Heidi
on 3/31/2008 9:40:58 AM
"A female athletic trainer and substitute teacher at Hinkley High School in Aurora has been fired and charged with sexual assault on a former student.
According to Aurora police, Yvette Starzyk, 26, turned herself in Friday afternoon and was charged with two felonies: sexual assault on a child with a pattern of abuse and sexual assault on a child by a person in a position of trust.
She has been released from the Aurora Detention Center on $20,000 bond.
This case has been submitted to the Adams County district attorney's office for possible prosecution.
The investigation, which began last week, showed that Starzyk allegedly had an ongoing sexual affair with a former student who was 15 at the time, police said.
The sexual encounters took place at several locations away from the school.
Authorities say the investigation began on March 17 when Hinkley officials approached police with concerns about Starzyk.
Police said they believe there may be more victims involved with Starzyk and are asking anyone with information to contact Detective Chris Fanning at 303-739-6096." (Mike McPhee/The Denver Post 3/30/08)
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Teacher Accused In Relationship W/Student
Posted
By:
Prince
on 3/30/2008 5:31:40 PM
"A 28-year old Oswego City school teacher is accused of having an intimate relationship with a 16 year old student.
Jennifer Dempsey faces charges of endangering the welfare of a child for having what investigators call an ongoing inappropriate intimate relationship with the teen. They also say she is currently a teacher in the Oswego City School District. This is a misdemeanor charge, and Dempsy was released after her arrest, and will be back in court next week. We are still awaiting word regarding her employment status in the district. A 1:30 news conference has been scheduled to discuss that aspect of the case with the media." (By Keith Kobland/WTVH.com 3/26/08)
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Sex, Drug Counts Added To Swogger's Charges
Posted
By:
Prince
on 3/30/2008 5:26:00 PM
"City police filed additional charges Thursday against accused stripper-turned-Highlands teacher's aide Abbie Jane Swogger, accusing her of soliciting sex from minors and having unlawful contact with them in a hotel room last month.
New Kensington police also filed delivering cocaine charges yesterday against Swogger, 34, of Harrison.
District Judge Frank J. Pallone Jr. remanded her to the Westmoreland County jail pending her preliminary hearing next month.
Police previously charged Swogger with having cocaine and drug paraphernalia and corrupting the morals of minors.
In the new charges, police allege Swogger "asked or encouraged" two 15-year-old runaway girls to have sex with her.
Swogger also is accused of asking the girls, one from Tarentum, the other from Brackenridge, to have sex with Swogger, a 17-year-old boy and another youth. The incident occurred at an overnight drug, beer and sex party held late last month in the Clarion Hotel, authorities said.
According to a police papers, Swogger admitted to having sex with the 17-year-old boy and asked police, "How serious is that?"
For the first time Thursday, police said once she was under arrest, Swogger took police to an Arnold house where she said the 17-year-old and a man bought the cocaine that was found in the hotel room she rented the night of Feb. 21.
Police said the alleged Arnold drug dealer was arrested separately.
One of the 15-year-old girls told police Swogger tried to touch her breasts, told the girl she was bisexual, and suggested a "threesome" with the other 15-year-old girl. But the first girl told police she said no, even as Swogger undressed and told the girls how much she enjoyed having sex with the 17-year-old boy.
According to police, the 17-year-old boy said he saw a man have sex with one of the runaways in the hotel room. That man later said he knew she was 15 and that he had sex with her twice.
The 17-year-old also claimed he saw Swogger sell cocaine -- $20 worth to a Harrison woman and $100 worth of cocaine to a Brackenridge man -- in the hotel room.
By Thursday afternoon, neither the boy, the woman nor the man had been charged by police.
Westmoreland County Assistant District Attorney Leo J. Ciaramitaro said he couldn't comment about possible charges against others in the case.
Swogger may face charges of interfering with the custody of minors Allegheny County because she allegedly picked up the girls along a Natrona street on Feb. 21 on the day that they allegedly skipped out of school.
Harrison and Allegheny County police are investigating Swogger and anticipate filing charges, Harrison Chief Mike Klein said.
Ciaramitaro confirmed discussions have been held with Allegheny County prosecutors about possibly combining charges and prosecuting Swogger in a single trial.
Swogger's attorney, Duke George, described the new charges as "unbelievable" because police and prosecutors are "now alleging an orgy and using drugs with kids."
He also questioned the legal status of witnesses lined up against Swogger.
"Surely some promises have been made to those individuals with the understanding no charges will be filed against them," he said. "Have they offered immunity to people to testify against Abbie?"
"Immunity? I have no comment," Ciaramitaro replied when asked about George's accusation.
Each of the three new charges filed yesterday is a felony.
If convicted, Swogger could be sentenced to a maximum of 20 years in prison for each of the latest charges.
Pallone revoked her bond after she tried to contact one of the juveniles at the hotel. She has been in the county jail since then.
A preliminary hearing on all charges is to be scheduled for April." (Chuck Biedka/VALLEY NEWS DISPATCH 3/28/08)
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Everyone's Doing It - Must Be Alright
Posted
By:
FlyBoy
on 3/29/2008 2:11:19 PM
If this is so widespread, which it appears that it is, why not just make it legal?
I can hear this argument being made just wait and see.
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Experts: Teacher-Student Sex Is Abuse, No Matter What
Posted
By:
FlyBoy
on 3/29/2008 2:08:42 PM
"When it comes to teachers and students, there is no such thing as consensual sex, experts said yesterday.
The power differential is too exploitative in those sexual encounters, said Charol Shakeshaft, a former Hofstra University professor who now teaches educational leadership at Virginia Commonwealth University and is an expert on sexual abuse in schools.
"It's a violation of trust and professional boundaries," Shakeshaft said of the March 20 encounter Nassau police say happened between Heather Kennedy, 25, a math teacher at Wantagh High School, and a 16-year-old boy who is a student at the school.
Kennedy was arraigned yesterday on charges of statutory rape and endangering the welfare of a child. The age of sexual consent in New York State is 17, police said.
Even if the boy wasn't in Kennedy's class, Shakeshaft said the mere fact that he attended the same school indicates "sexual exploitation and bad judgment," she said.
And when the teacher is a woman and the student is a boy, the sensationalist aspects of these liaisons are magnified, Shakeshaft said.
"I believe that females get a lot more attention [in the media] because I think it adds another dimension," she said. "People don't seem to think it's child abuse then."
It's a double standard fueled by popular perceptions of older women with younger men, according to Mike Lew, a Brookline, Mass., psychotherapist who has treated and written about survivors of childhood sexual abuse.
"We've been very slow to accept the fact that boys and girls are abused by both men and women," Lew said in an interview after the Feb. 25 arrest of Maria Commins, a Greenport teacher's aide who was charged with raping her son's 15-year-old friend.
"Boys are supposed to be little men," Lew said. "And men are supposed to be up for sex with women under any circumstance. If a boy is abused by a woman, if any part of it was pleasurable ... even if part of that excitement is fear, it tends not to get defined as abuse."
Female offenders often target younger men for a "sense of power," said psychologist Mic Hunter, author of "Abused Boys: The Neglected Victims of Sexual Abuse."
But some offenders don't admit their actions were abusive: Commins told police that she and her victim were in love, and Seattle teacher Mary Kay LeTourneau, 43, married her former sixth-grade pupil after she served 7 1/2 years in prison on charges that she had raped him.
"They believe they're victims or they're equals," said Hollida Wakefield, a psychologist in Northfield, Minn., who has treated sex offenders and victims. "It's hard for them to comprehend that it's criminal." (SOPHIA CHANG AND CHRISTINE ARMARIO/NewsDay.com 3/28/08)
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2 Vian Teachers Under Investigation
Posted
By:
FlyBoy
on 3/29/2008 2:06:43 PM
"Two Vian High School teachers are being investigated on accusations that they had inappropriate relationships with students, Vian Police Chief Danny Hoover said.
Officials at the school, about 80 miles southeast of Tulsa in Sequoyah County, notified the Police Department in mid-February.
But Vian Superintendent Law rence Barnes wouldn't reveal specifics about the accusations or say how school officials learned about them.
The two female teachers, Tracy Boshers and Jennifer Cowart, have pretermination hearings set for April 14 and 22, respectively.
Both have been suspended with pay, Barnes said.
"When it's personnel stuff, we really can't say a lot," he said. "After the hearings, everything will come out."
Neither teacher has been arrested, Hoover said, but an arrest warrant on a complaint of sexual battery for one of the teachers was taken to the District Attorney's Office this week. Hoover would not say which teacher the warrant names.
Another warrant could be filed with the district attorney next week, he said.
Hoover wouldn't comment on the age, gender or number of juveniles who are possible victims, but he said some are still attending the high school and some are now out of school.
Barnes said 1,025 students are enrolled in Vian schools and that 350 attend the high school.
Hoover said this is the first time he has investigated these types of allegations in the town of about 1,700 people." (SARA PLUMMER/TulsaWorld.com 3/28/08)
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MHS Teacher Held On Sex Charge
Posted
By:
FlyBoy
on 3/29/2008 2:04:25 PM
"The Pottawatomie County sheriff's department Wednesday night arrested a Manhattan High School teacher for unlawful sexual relations with a 17-year-old male student.
Authorities said a Pottawatomie County deputy on patrol found the two in a vehicle parked in the Spillway Marina Park area of Tuttle Creek Dam at about 10 p.m. The 32-year-old female, Katherine J. Harder, a language arts teacher at Manhattan High, was arrested on probable cause of unlawful sexual relations and taken to the Pottawatomie County Jail.
Michele Jones, the coordinator of communications and public relations, said Harder was initially suspended with pay from her teaching duties, and later in the morning submitted her resignation, effective immediately." (TheMercury.com 3/29/08)
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Wantagh Teacher Accused Of Sex With Student
Posted
By:
FlyBoy
on 3/29/2008 1:58:09 PM
"A well-liked teacher and track coach at a Wantagh school stands accused of statutory rape after police say she had sex with a teenage student.
Heather Kennedy, 25, has taught math at Wantagh High School for three years, officials said, and had a good reputation with students and administrators alike.
But Kennedy was forced from her job teaching 10th- and 11th-graders and into court after she was arrested Wednesday. She was charged with having sex with a 16-year-old in his car after his father contacted police because the boy told him of the tryst, police said.
Thursday, Wantagh senior Kayla Jacobson, 18, credited Kennedy with helping her gain admission to Iona College. Kennedy seemed to have an easy time relating to students because she was closer to their age, Jacobson said.
"I guess that's a good and a bad thing, because a lot of people liked her because of that but then I guess it doesn't make things any better," she said. "She was the kind of teacher, if you had a problem, you could talk to her, and she would listen."
Kennedy, who lives in Massapequa, hung her head and did not answer reporters' questions as she was led from Nassau Police headquarters to a patrol car, which took her to her arraignment in First District Court in Hempstead Thursday.
District Court Judge Norman Janowitz set Kennedy's bail at $35,000, which was later posted by a family member.
The judge also issued a temporary order of protection for the boy, whose name was withheld because he is a minor. The statutory rape charge, an E felony -- which carries the shortest jail sentence for felony cases -- has a maximum penalty of 11/3 to four years in jail.
Nassau police said the boy contacted the teacher via text message the night of March 19. They agreed to meet and spent at least three hours together before going in his car to the parking lot of Massapequa High School on Merrick Road early March 20, where they had intercourse, according to Det. Lt. Richard Zito of the special victims unit.
When questioned by his father about being out past midnight, the teen initially said he was with friends but later said he'd been with a teacher, Zito said.
"We believe it was a one-time incident," Zito said. The pair have known each other at least since last September.
Wantagh school superintendent Carl Bonuso said Kennedy was put on indefinite paid leave but declined to comment further. Kennedy's attorney, Steve Zimmer, also declined to comment after her arraignment. Kennedy has no prior arrests." (ANDREW STRICKLER AND MATTHEW CHAYES/NewsDay.com 3/27/08)
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Student 'Aborted Teacher's Child'
Posted
By:
Eagle1
on 3/28/2008 11:28:01 AM
"A 16-YEAR-OLD girl seduced by a teacher 30 years her senior aborted their child in her final year of high school, a court has heard.
Stephen Peter Morrow, 55, of the Gold Coast, has pleaded not guilty to 11 counts of sexual penetration of a 16 or 17-year-old child under his care or supervision.
During his time as a physics teacher at Melbourne Girls College in Richmond, Morrow allegedly began a sexual relationship with the girl, now 25. She subsequently became pregnant and had an abortion, prosecutor Daryl Wraith told the County Court jury.
"She was a young girl. He was a teacher in a position of authority," he said. He said Morrow would pick the girl up in his car "two or three times a week" for sex, often in car parks, and then return her to her home in Northcote, where she lived with her mother.
They used no contraception and in September of her senior year the girl became pregnant. "(The accused) came to the fertility clinic, waited in the reception area and paid for the procedure," Mr Wraith said. After the abortion the girl began taking the pill, he said. The relationship resumed 14 days after the abortion.
Mr Wraith played the jury a tape recording of a conversation between Morrow and the alleged victim made in 2006. "I want you to know I've been through an enormous amount of pain regarding the things that happened," she tells Morrow on the recording.
She asks him if she meant anything to him, and if she was more than just a "sexual object" to him. "Of course you did," he says.
"It wasn't just about sex?" she asks him. "No, of course not. If you think about it, it took a long time for that to start for it to be the reason," he replies.
Mr Wraith told the jury the tape proved that Morrow had had a sexual relationship with the alleged victim while she was at school, because he had not denied being the father of the foetus.
But Sharon Cure, for Morrow, said her client did not start a sexual relationship with the alleged victim while she was at school. She said the alleged victim had told Morrow about the abortion, and other teachers, but that he was not the father.
She denied that the recording of their conversation proved the relationship. "It's not a clear admission and this intelligent and manipulating girl speaks very fast," Ms Cure told the jury.
The trial continues before Judge Thomas Wodak." (Sarah-Jane Collins/The Sydney Morning Herald 3/27/08)
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Another Teacher Sex Arrest
Posted
By:
GOP
on 3/26/2008 5:04:25 PM
"If you thought twice in three weeks was enough, think again. Late Monday, Pasco County officials said a 40-year-old substitute teacher has been charged with having sex with an underage male student.
Deputies say Lisa Robyn Marinelli is charged with sexual battery on a minor. Marinelli is a substitute teacher with the Pasco County school district, and deputies say the boy is a student at Mitchell High School.
According to investigators, they had been keeping an eye on her since back in February, when the boy's father reported seeing his son get out of the teacher's car while pulling up his pants.
Detectives say the boy's father turned his son's cell phone over to investigators, and they found a number of text messages between the two still stored on it. Many of them, they say, were sexually charged, and investigators say the messages could be a major key to the case.
Deputies also say Marinelli gave the boy a pair of her underwear as a memento.
Some of Marinelli's neighbors told FOX 13 they're surprised by the news.
"I'm shocked," said Elliot Mebima, who lives near Marinelli. "I just hope it's not true. I mean, it's my neighbor, you know?"
According to deputies, Marinelli is married and has two children. She bonded out of jail late Monday night.
Marinelli is the third teacher arrested in the Bay Area on sex charges in little over a week.
Last Thursday, 45-year-old Freedom High School teacher Mary Jo Spack - an honors English instructor- was arrested on similar charges. The week before that, deputies arrested 28-year-old Stephanie Ragusa on charges that she had a sexual relationship with a boy who was a student at Davidsen Middle School in Tampa, where she previously worked." (Lisa Robyn Marinelli/MyFOXTampaBay.com 3/25/08)
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Another Teacher Accused Of Sex With Student
Posted
By:
TBird
on 3/24/2008 8:21:11 AM
"Sex," "teacher" and "student" meet again.
"A 45-year-old high school honors teacher was arrested Thursday, accused of having sex with a 17-year-old boy.
Police say Freedom High School English teacher Mary Jo Spack, 45, met two male students at a liquor store last Friday, then took them to a Tampa motel, where she had sex with one of them in the shower as four other students overheard in the next room.
Spack's arrest, police said, was spurred by rumors at the school. The boy's boasting about having had sex with a teacher eventually caught the attention of a school resource officer, Tampa police spokeswoman Laura McElroy said.
This latest teacher scandal comes one week after another female Hillsborough County teacher was arrested after being accused of having sex with a 14-year-old from Davidsen Middle School, where she taught.
Thursday's news prompted one Hillsborough County School Board member to request a special meeting or workshop to discuss the recent rash of teacher sex scandals.
"I think the public feels this is an epidemic, and I'm very concerned about it," said School Board member April Griffin.
Four Hillsborough teachers have been arrested in the last five months for inappropriate sexual contact with students. Three of those teachers were women.
Two other female teachers, former Greco Middle School teacher Debra Lafave and former Wharton High teacher and coach Jaymee Wallace, are serving out sentences for charges they had sex with underage students.
"I'm just sick to my stomach about what's going on in our schools at the moment," Griffin said. "Is this Hillsborough County, or is this something that's going on across the nation?"
School district spokeswoman Linda Cobbe said system leaders were blindsided by the allegations against Spack, who has been with the school system since 2000.
The Wesley Chapel resident has had no prior disciplinary issues, Cobbe said. She taught at Chamberlain High until transferring to Freedom in 2004.
And though Spack's personnel reviews weren't made available to the Times Thursday afternoon, Cobbe said she received satisfactory evaluations.
Andrew McAlister, a professor at the University of Tampa, taught with Spack during the spring 2006 semester at Freedom High. He described her classroom demeanor as "really lively, really engaged" — someone he looked up to.
"She was very good at getting and keeping students' attention," McAlister said. "She would say she's big, she's loud, she's boisterous. The students always liked that about her."
His knowledge of Spack didn't mesh with the police allegations. And he said he wants to see what happens in court.
"If you asked me if that was something Mary Jo would do, I would say no. & I don't know a person there who would think she'd be less than professional."
According to McElroy, the police spokeswoman, Spack purchased a bottle of Crown Royal at a liquor store, then drove the 17-year-old victim and another 18-year-old Freedom student from the store to a Howard Johnson Express Inn on Fowler Avenue.
The students, meanwhile, text messaged other friends that they were having a party, McElroy said.
Once there, police say, Spack shared the liquor with the two students. Three more Freedom students, whose ages were unavailable Thursday, arrived.
Spack and the 17-year-old went into the bathroom. According to Spack's arrest affidavit, the remaining four students could hear the two having sex in the shower. When Spack and the boy emerged from the bathroom, both appeared wet, the arrest report says.
Spack is charged with two counts of contributing to the delinquency of minors and one count of unlawful sex with a minor.
Police took a motel receipt into evidence.
Spack was released from Orient Road Jail on $8,500 bail at 8:30 p.m., four hours after she was booked.
Public records and newspaper clippings indicate Spack is married and has a daughter. No one was home Thursday afternoon at her home in Wesley Chapel. A phone message left at Spack's home was not returned Friday evening.
Prior to joining Hillsborough County, Spack interned at Land O'Lakes High School in Pasco County. She graduated summa cum laude from the University of South Florida in 2000, receiving a bachelor's in education.
Spack has been placed on paid leave by the school system, pending review of her case by the School Board.
Griffin, the School Board member, said the spate of incidents begs numerous questions.
"Are women who do this more sensational than men who do this?" she asked. "Is this something that's always happened and just been covered up?"
Richard Gartner is a New York psychologist and psychoanalyst and author of several books about sexual abuse. He said the most likely answer is that society until now has been more permissive of women who have sex with underage boys." (Rebecca Catalanello/TampaBay.com 3/20/08)
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Former Teacher Pleads Guilty Of Sex With Student
Posted
By:
Professor
on 3/10/2008 9:44:26 PM
"A former substitute teacher in the Dunklin School District in Jefferson County will be sentenced next month after pleading guilty of having sex with a 14-year-old student.
Teresa Engelbach, 22, of Pevely, pleaded guilty last week to one felony count of second-degree statutory rape and one misdemeanor count of sexual misconduct. She could get up to 7 years in prison and a fine of up to $5,000 on the rape charge, and up to 6 months in prison and a fine of up to $500 on the sexual misconduct charge.
Jefferson County Circuit Judge M. Edward Williams set sentencing for April 15.
The charges against Engelbach were filed last March after the student, then in the eighth grade, reported to a teacher that he had had sex with Engelbach, a substitute teacher at Senn-Thomas Middle School in Herculaneum. The teacher told school administrators, who called police.
The incidents took place last year between Feb. 1 and March 13 in several areas of Jefferson County and did not involve other students, police said.
Engelbach had a substitute teaching certificate from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, which requires a fingerprint background check through the Missouri Highway Patrol and FBI. Those checks came back clear, Dunklin Superintendent Stan Stratton has said.
Stratton said Wednesday that Engelbach had not taught in the district since she was charged.
Her attorney, Daris Almond Jr., was unavailable Wednesday for comment.
Stratton said Engelbach also formerly taught at the district's high school and elementary school. She began working for the district, which has 1,350 students, in September 2006.
Jim Morris, a spokesman for the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, said Engelbach did not renew her substitute teaching certificate for the 2007-2008 school year." (Robert Kelly/ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH 3/6/08)
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Teacher Sent Nude Photos to Boy
Posted
By:
Letters
on 1/8/2008 10:00:57 AM
"A high school gym teacher accused of sending nude photos of herself to a 14-year-old freshman at her school has admitted to having sex with the boy, police said Monday.
Beth Ann Chester, a 26-year-old health and physical education teacher at Moon Area High School in suburban Pittsburgh, was jailed on charges of sexual abuse of children, corruption of minors and related counts for sending the teen nude pictures and salacious text messages, authorities said.
Moon Township Police Chief Leo McCarthy said Monday that authorities planned to file other charges, including felony statutory sexual assault, after Chester confessed to having sex with the boy after a school event.
"She confessed to having full sexual intercourse with this child in her vehicle in the school parking lot," McCarthy said.
The boy told police he fell in love with the married teacher during a three-month relationship, according to court papers. He denied having physical contact with Chester, except for a hug the last day of school before winter break, police said.
McCarthy said he couldn't explain why the boy denied having sex with the teacher.
"She admitted to us quite graphically what happened," McCarthy said. "Perhaps he wanted to protect her. We're dealing with a 14-year-old. This is typical of someone who's a victim. He's in love with this person and she's in jail now and losing her job."
The boy told police that he and Chester began exchanging text messages in late October, and that they devised a system to spend extra time with one another at school, police said. In one message, police said, Chester called the boy "sexy" and made a graphic reference to his body.
The boy's parents had discovered suggestive text messages and met with Chester on Dec. 26, police said. The boy's parents told the teacher they would not seek criminal charges if she resigned, police said.
Chester tendered her resignation the next day, citing "personal reasons."
Chester remained in the Allegheny County jail unable to post $50,000 bond on Monday.
The staff of Coraopolis District Judge Mary Murray said they had no record of an attorney for Chester. Nobody answered the door at her apartment, and her husband, a coach at Penn State University's McKeesport campus, did not immediately return a phone call or an e- mail.
The Moon Area School Board must vote on whether to accept Chester's resignation. Until then, she remains on the district payroll. She had worked for the district for more than two years, school officials said.
School district attorney Jack Cambest and police could not say whether the boy was in Chester's class." (RAMIT PLUSHNICK-MASTI/AP/Breitbart.com 1/7/08)
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How I Found My 13-Year-Old Daughter Having Sex With Her Lesbian Tennis Coach
Posted
By:
Letters
on 10/3/2007 10:02:20 AM
A mother told a court today of the moment she found her 13-year-old daughter having sex with the child's tennis coach.
Former tennis professional Claire Lyte, 29, is on trial at Liverpool Crown Court accused of five counts of sexual activity with a child.
Lyte, of Shirley, Solihull, West Midlands, who was at the time of the allegations a coach at the Lawn Tennis Association Academy, denies the charges at Liverpool Crown Court.
Today the alleged victim's mother told how Lyte had appeared to be copying her daughter's hairstyle and offering to baby-sit in the months leading up to their discovery in the girl's bedroom of her Merseyside home.
She then told of the incident, in October 2005, when she returned home early from a party to find coach and student in bed.
The mother, who cannot be identified, said: "I went into the sitting room and noticed there was a newspaper on the table which I don't buy, I then went upstairs and saw two pairs of tennis shoes outside my daughter's bedroom.
"I walked into the room and saw my daughter and Claire naked on the bed." She added that she saw them a performing sex act.
"I was in complete shock and I screamed and they became aware that I was there. My daughter jumped up and ran off and Claire pulled the bed sheet over her head.
"Claire stayed in the bed under the sheet, and I shouted at both of them to get some clothes on and come downstairs.
"I was screaming at Claire, 'Get out, what have you done, what have you done to my child, you are nothing but a paedophile'.
"They came downstairs dressed and my daughter sat down in a chair and curled into a ball, Claire sat with her head in her hands.
"I was in complete and utter shock, I kept asking why. I couldn't believe what I had seen."
The mother explained that they sat in the living room talking about what had happened for about a couple of hours.
She said: "Claire just kept telling me she loved my daughter.
"I kept saying, 'She is 13'. My daughter just cried and cried. The phone went and it was my friend asking me to come back to the party.
"I was just in complete shock and needed to get out of there. I took my daughter and we sat in the car and never spoke a word.
"We got to the party and sat in the corner in silence. I told Claire to wait at the house, she was hysterical and I wanted to talk to her when we were composed.
"We stayed at the party for about an hour and a half.
"Claire said it was the first time it had happened and that she cared so much for my daughter."
Lyte's defence will argue that the incident never took place, that there was no sexual relationship between the defendant and the 13-year-old girl.
The defence claims the allegations have been invented by the mother, who was upset that the young girl's tennis career was coming to an end." (DailyMail.co.uk 10/3/07)
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Denton Teacher Had Sex With 13-Year-Old Former Student
Posted
By:
Bernie
on 7/12/2007 1:43:09 PM
"A teacher with the Denton Independent School District is in jail charged with two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child.
Lauren Cosgrove had a sexual relationship with a 13-year-old boy while babysitting him during the summer, according to Jim Bryan with the Denton Police Department.
Police said the boy is a former student of Cosgrove's. She is a 7th grade teacher at Strickland Middle School.
Investigators believe that the only contact between the teacher and the boy was on June 2 and July 3.
There was no sexual contact during the school year, according to police." ( A teacher with the Denton Independent School District is in jail charged with two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child.
Lauren Cosgrove had a sexual relationship with a 13-year-old boy while babysitting him during the summer, according to Jim Bryan with the Denton Police Department.
Police said the boy is a former student of Cosgrove's. She is a 7th grade teacher at Strickland Middle School.
Investigators believe that the only contact between the teacher and the boy was on June 2 and July 3.
There was no sexual contact during the school year, according to police." (FOX4 7/11/07)
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Teacher Is Charged With Child-Sex Abuse
Posted
By:
Bernie
on 7/12/2007 1:37:53 PM
"An English teacher at Cyprus High School was charged Tuesday with having sex with one of her juvenile students.
Christy Anne Brown, 33, was booked into the Salt Lake County Jail on Sunday. She was charged in 3rd District Court with three counts of forcible sex abuse, all second-degree felonies.
Brown was arrested after a West Valley City police officer found her in a parked car along with a male juvenile near 2900 South and 5600 West.
Brown was the boy's high school English teacher, according to a jail booking report and court documents obtained Tuesday. She told police she first had sex with the boy April 8, and the incidents had continued until she was arrested.
"The suspect admits to having sex over 40 times. She also admitted to having oral sex with the juvenile at her home and also at work," the jail report stated.
Police say the boy was 16 years old when the incidents began, and turned 17 last month.
"We believe this is the only victim," said West Valley City Police Capt. Tom McLachlan.
Brown was being held Tuesday in jail on $30,000 bail, according to court documents. Her home address is listed as being in Texas. Brown was hired by the Granite School District in August 2005 and resigned June 1 of this year, reportedly to take another job out of state.
"We are extremely disheartened," district spokesman Randy Ripplinger said Tuesday.
As of early Tuesday afternoon, the district had not received any information about the alleged victim. However, once that information is revealed, the district would offer whatever assistance is needed, Ripplinger said.
Very few people were at Cyprus High School on Tuesday during its summer session. One student, who wished to remain anonymous, said Brown taught mostly sophomores. He said she was a popular teacher, and some students would try to switch classes so they could be taught by her." (Pat Reavy/DeseretNews.com 7/11/07)
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Teacher Pleads "No Contest" To Sex Charges
Posted
By:
UFO
on 7/6/2007 11:22:14 AM
"A former Roseville teacher was sentenced today to four months in jail, four years probation and 400 hours of community service after pleading "no contest" to charges she had unlawful sex with a 16-year-old student.
Kelly Spaich also pleaded "no contest" to a misdemeanor charge of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. her attorney said Spaich will apply for alternative sentencing which means could avoid jail time altogether.
Spaich resigned as a teacher shortly after she was arrested April 5. She was accused of having sexual relations with a high school student whom she had taught at Silverado Middle School." (Elizabeth Bishop/News10.net 7/3/07)
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Teacher Accused Of Having Sex With Student, 13
Posted
By:
G-man
on 6/19/2007 8:04:01 AM
"A middle school teacher in Prescott, Wis. has been fired and the Pierce County Sheriff is investigating claims she had sex with a 13-year-old student.
"It's just shocking to hit Prescott like this," said Tom Riley a Prescott resident.
The 38-year-old woman was a substitute at Prescott Middle School.
The student's father said he found the two having a middle of the night rendezvous together at the teacher's home after the boy stole his mother's car.
Sources said the woman's husband and 13-year-old daughter were home at the time.
The father filed a restraining order which claims the two had sexual intercourse. He said he has copies of e-mails between the two.
Zach Simones, who coached the 13-year-old boy on the seventh grade football team, said he is sickened by the incident.
"He was dating the lady's 13-year-old daughter before this happened," said Simones.
The woman taught at both the middle and high schools, but the superintendent said his investigation has turned up no other students who were involved with this woman.
The school superintendent also said the teacher and student did not meet in the classroom.
The Pierce County Sheriff confirms that they are investigating." (Jason DeRusha/WCCO.com 6/16/07)
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Profile Of A Sex Offending Teacher
Posted
By:
RushMan
on 2/2/2007 6:54:20 PM
If you have a 15-year-old son, live in Florida or California and your son’s teacher is a 31-year-old woman named Pamela, Nicole or Amy you might have a reason to worry.
That’s because my review of 79 cases of sex offending women teachers in the U.S. suggests this is the typical circumstance in which misbehavior occurs.
Last week, I got an e-mail from the website WorldNetDaily, which has something of a fascination with sex offending women teachers. The site has been writing about such teachers for some time and arguing that there is an “epidemic” of women teachers having sex with teen-aged boys across the country. Among the high profile cases we all remember are Mary Kay Letourneau in Washington and Debra LaFave in Florida.
The typical case of an teacher-child sex offense, in most of our minds, involves an adult male offender. But in the news there seems to more and more cases of women teachers as the offender over the past couple of years. Is this because there is an actual trend of more sex offenses by women teachers? Or is it just that we hear about them more?
Well, WorldNetDaily did an interesting thing — it compiled every media report it could find online about sex offending women teachers.
I have to say, I found the list pretty amazing. I also typed some basic info from each case into an Excel spreadsheet and ran some numbers. I threw out cases outside the U.S. and non-teacher cases such as bus drivers and teachers’ aides. Here’s what I found:
—There were 79 total cases. The oldest (the infamous Pamela Smart) was from 1993 and the newest was from 2007. A huge 70 percent (56) of the cases WorldNetDaily found came to light since the start of 2005.
—The biggest states for these cases are Florida and California with eight cases, followed by New York (7), Texas (7) and New Jersey (6). No big surprise there as all are among the most populous states. Ohio, also a large state, has perhaps fewer cases than might be expected with three, including Huber Heights teacher Celeste Emerick.
—The average age of the victim in these cases is 15 and victims on the list range in age from 12 to 17.
—Pamela, Nicole and Amy were the most common first names of offending teachers, but with just three cases for each name.
—Eight cases involved teacher misbehavior with multiple boys and eight cases involved misconduct by women teachers with young girls.
I was surprised by the pure number of these sorts of cases since 2005. I am doubtful that this is a growing trend as opposed to one we are just noticing more, but I have to admit this made me re-think my view. I was also surprised by how young the average victim was. I would have guessed 16 or 17.
What jumps out at you from these stats? (DaytonDailyNews.com 1/30/07)
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Substitute Teacher Charged With Sexual Assault On Minor
Posted
By:
DOC
on 1/23/2007 6:17:26 PM
"A Palm Beach County substitute teacher was arrested Monday afternoon and charged with sexually assaulting a minor at Pahokee Middle-Senior High.
The teacher, Heather Lea Burroughs, 23, was working in the school's "exceptional student education" program when she allegedly performed a sex act on a student in an empty classroom during school hours Friday.
Burroughs, who lives in Pahokee, has been working as a substitute in the district since July and has no state criminal record. She could not be reached for comment.
If convicted of the first-degree felony, Burroughs could face up to 30 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
District officials would not release the student's name or age, or whether the student was taught by Burroughs, citing student confidentiality laws. Numerous calls to Pahokee Middle-Senior High Principal Marvin Bain and School Police Chief Jim Kelly were not returned Monday.
District spokesman Nat Harrington said other information, such as who witnessed the activity, whether it was an isolated event and why it took police three days to make an arrest, was not available to the public.
"It's an ongoing investigation and any information ... cannot be revealed during the investigation," Harrington said.
Burroughs has been removed from the district's pool of substitute teachers, Harrington said.
According to Burroughs' Web page on MySpace.com, she attended Pahokee Middle-Senior High, spent a year as the school's Future Farmers of America club president and graduated in 2001." (Don Jordan/PalmBeachPost.com 1/23/07)
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'Boys As Victims' Don't Fit Expectations
Posted
By:
DOC
on 1/23/2007 5:48:47 PM
But experts say they are hurt by attacks, just like girls
"WND has been documented dozens of recent cases of women teachers assaulting underage male students, probably the least documented type of educator sexual misconduct even though almost no comprehensive statistics are kept on any category of such attacks.
The few experts on such conduct say that males can be assaulted and victimized as well as females, only for young boys society's treatment is different.
Terri Miller, who runs Stop Educator Sexual Abuse, Misconduct and Exploitation, said she does hear from men who were victims of female teachers. One man was 53, and never had been able to establish a normal relationship since he was assaulted by a female teacher at age 12.
She said the second generation of crime even could be blamed on female assailants. "Because they are not able to report with the expectation they're going to receive justice like a girl would … what ends up happening in many cases with boys [they] overcompensate and end up becoming domestically violent abusers, rapists – because of the fact a woman dominated them," she said.
Steve Braveman, a therapist who has posted an article on the SESAME website, noted that about one in six of all American boys is molested by the time he reaches 18.
Since statistics are virtually unavailable, he noted, it's not clear exactly who is molesting them every time, but he said the vast majority appear to have been victimized by someone they know. "Someone they trust very much. Someone in a position of authority."
"So, if boys are being molested by all of these kinds of people, why doesn't the public hear more about this? Part of the answer may lie in the fact than an estimated 50 percent of all molests, males and females combined, are never reported. It is also estimated that only 10 percent of molested boys ever make such reports. … Many of these unreported molestations of boys are suspected to be at the hands of a teacher, educator and/or other person in position of authority."
He noted that boys, like girls, are threatened when they are assaulted, they have fears of not being believed, but there also are problems unique to their gender.
"Many believe that if they were molested by another male that they are now, or will become, homosexuals. Society tells boys that they should be 'tough' and solve their problems on their own. If the boy has an early sexual experience with an older woman they are told they are 'lucky!' How embarrassing for a male to admit he has molested …," he said.
"The unwillingness of boys to report when they've been sexually victimized is even greater when the perpetrator is a teacher, educator and/or other person in authority," he continued. "When one is victimized by a teacher, or other person in a position of authority, the sense of betrayal is greatly magnified."
He wrote that teachers, like priests, principals and senators, are "trusted" individuals.
And "the vow of secrecy not to tell, not to report, is sealed if the child does speak up and is not believed," he said. "It quite often takes an incredible amount of pain and failure for males sexually abused in these ways to speak up. Bouts of alcoholism, drug abuse, sexual acting out, sexual shutting down, divorces and financial ruin are common. When it gets to be too much some come forward," he said." (WorldNetDaily.com 1/23/07)
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Sex Assaults By Teachers On Students An 'Epidemic'
Posted
By:
DOC
on 1/23/2007 5:21:41 PM
Organization fights uphill battle in system that protects predators
"An estimated 5 million students in United States schools have been assaulted sexually by teachers, according to a congressional report. But no one is calling for investigations or law enforcement crackdowns, there have been no campaigns to ban the offenders from schools, and in many states there aren't even any requirements such predator attacks be reported to education licensing agencies.
"We have approximately 5 million children suffering and no one is calling for an investigation, for any kind of data to be collected to find out why that many children are being hurt by teachers," said Terri Miller, who runs probably the only organization in the nation that focuses specifically on assaults by educators on students. "This is an epidemic."
In fact, in many cases, especially where the attacker is a woman and the student a male, such assaults are treated as a joke, with a hand-slap for the teacher, and some ribald locker room humor directed at the student.
WND has documented in recent months an alarming string of dozens of cases of female teacher-on-male student sexual assaults, but those are just part of the overall problem, Miller said.
Her volunteer group, called Stop Educator Sexual Abuse, Misconduct and Exploitation, often feels overwhelmed by the dearth of information, injuries to students, and obstacles posed by opponents such as the National Education Association.
But she says it's a do-or-die battle.
"I won't give up trying. I have vowed to keep trying until we have good strong legislation to hold the perpetrators criminally responsible," she told WND.
She said the problem easily could be many times larger than the scandals involving Catholic Church priests molesting children, and the hundreds of millions of dollars in civil liabilities already determined in those cases.
"You are not mandated to send your children to church, but you are mandated by law to send your children to school," she said. "And, by God, schools better be mandated to keep them safe."
She's said she's confident of two things: the problem is bigger than most people want to realize, and there's very little being done to address it.
Debra LaFave, 25: Tampa, Fla., area teacher received no jail time despite having sex with her 14-year-old male student in a classroom and her Hillsborough County home. In another county, Marion, she was accused of having sex with the boy in an SUV. LaFave claimed at a March 2006 news conference she had a bipolar disorder. The boy's father said LaFave should have received prison time in her plea deal, noting, "It's a horrible, ugly thing that she's done."
"The U.S. Department of Education does not require any state to gather information on educators' misconduct with students. Only 17 of the states require that schools report to their own state Department of Education when a teacher resigns or is fired for these circumstances," Miller told WND.
And with so few requirements for reporting problems, the result is that offenders are not weeded out of the system, and in fact, many have been transferred and promoted even though their involvement in troubling situations is common knowledge, she said.
In one case, a school administrator had been in more than a dozen different school settings, with varying allegations of sexual misconduct in each case, before he finally was shut down, Miller said. And that happened only because the perpetrator drugged a student in order to assault him, and the student died of a drug overdose,
Even then, Miller said, it took the victim's family to hire a private investigator who assembled the background information in pursuit of a lawsuit over the death.
Even further, the established influences of teacher unions and other groups actually work to protect such offenders, sometimes making arrangements for a teacher caught in a sexual assault on a student to resign – with a positive recommendation – so they can move on the another district., she said.
In one case, a teacher caught stepping outside the law actually was paid damages to resign and move on.
One federal study that compiled data from previous studies showed there sometimes are no consequences, even if a teacher's sexual misdeeds are known to school administrators. It found:
Of 225 select cases of teacher sex abuse in New York, although all the accused had admitted to sexually abusing a student, not one was reported to the police and only 1 percent lost their license to teach.
A 2003 study reports that 159 Washington state coaches were "reprimanded, warned, or let go in the past decade because of sexual misconduct" – and yet, "at least 98 of them continued coaching or teaching afterward.”
A 2004 study reports that many school districts make confidential agreements with abusers, essentially trading a positive recommendation for a resignation. In one case, a Seattle educator named Luke Markishtum "had two decades of complaints of sex with students and providing alcohol and marijuana to students prior to his arrest for smuggling six tons of marijuana into the state. The district paid Markishtum the remainder of his salary that year, agreed to keep the record secret, and gave him an additional $69,000."
Miller said she's frustrated and upset over the lack of attention paid to the attacks. But she said the facts are plain: Teachers assaulting students just don't get much ink in newspapers or on police blotters.
For example, she said, over a couple of years 17 children in the Fallon, Nev., area were diagnosed with leukemia. What happened? The county and state health departments investigated, the national Centers for Disease Control did multiple research projects, Congress allocated hundreds of thousands of dollars and multiple promises have been made to find the cause, she said.
However, when she discovered 60 students had been sexually victimized over the course of one school teacher's 20-year career in another Nevada town, she had to do the investigation herself.
There's been only one significant study done on the problem in recent years, and that was a compilation and analysis of prior research. The 2004 study, ordered by Congress and commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education – concluded that nearly 10 percent of U.S. public school students have been targeted by unwanted sexual attention from school workers.
"Educator Sexual Misconduct: A Synthesis of Existing Literature," was authored by Charol Shakeshaft, professor of educational administration at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., and concluded that the mistreatment of those millions of students ranged from sexual comments to rape.
Her research backed up Miller's belief that the problem of assaults on students by teachers is many times larger than the scandal involving priests.
Shakeshaft noted a recent study by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops concluded 10,667 young people were sexually mistreated by priests between 1950 and 2002.
She also extrapolated from a national survey conducted for the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation in 2000 that roughly 290,000 students experienced some sort of physical sexual abuse by a public school employee between 1991 and 2000.
The report itself puts the number of students subject to sexual misconduct by a school employee during the kindergarten-to-grade-12 years at about 4.5 million.
The NEA has disputed the study findings, according to Education Week, calling it a "misuse of data" to suggest public schools have a problem like the Catholic Church.
"I take great umbrage at that suggestion," said NEA spokeswoman Kathleen Lyons. "That just seems like someone is reaching conclusions based on half the data that's needed."
But anecdotally, it's clear there's something to investigate. WND's own reporting shows that cases are occurring every week.
But WND reports also have shown that the treatment of victims, especially males, is not always as victims of crimes usually are treated. The issue of only reprimands for female teachers who assault male students is typified by a recent case in Utah:
Melinda Lee Deluca, a Utah teacher, was 30 and the high school student was 16 when they had sex, allegedly in a car in the school parking lot and her home, and when she was arrested, she given a slap on the wrist – just 90 days in jail in a plea bargain.
Comments on the case at KSL-TV, while not absolutely unanimous, clearly showed a high level of agreement: the student, a male, wasn't really a victim and the teacher, a female, wasn't really a perpetrator:
"Where were these teachers when I was in high school? I would have stuck around for all four years!!!" wrote Shawn H.
"Mary Kay Leternou (sorry if spelled wrong) got the book thrown at her, and for what? She got out just to marry the reason she got locked up in the first place!! What the heck did that accomplish? 7 years of her children not having their mother? Good job, guys!!" said Rachael C.
"This kid should feel lucky, I guarantee he blabbed to his buddies about it & then the parents found out somehow & then it all went from there," said Steve C. "Sex Ed at its finest!!!!!!"
"When this dude is 21, or 30, or whatever, he's going to be like… 'yea, I did it with my teacher' and laugh about it," said Alfonso J.
"This kid was probably the hero in the locker room!" wrote Dr. Kenneth.
Mary Kay Letourneau, 34: Des Moines, Wash., teacher did prison time after having sex with a sixth-grade student, Vili Fualaau, in 1996 and eventually had two children by him. She originally had Fualaau in her second-grade class at Shorewood Elementary School in Burien, Wash. The couple has since married.
In another case, the teacher was 33 and a veteran of 10 years in the English department at a Colorado Springs High School and the student was 17. They had sex three times a week for months and were caught by a student teacher who found sexually explicit letters.
But this really wasn't a case of rape, those involved in the case said, and not even really sexual assault, even though that was the technical charge in court. "This is an unfortunate situation because, in my opinion, this was bad human judgment rather than a criminal act," the teacher's lawyer, James Dostal, told reporters.
Judge Robert Lowrey must have agreed; because the teacher – Gwen Anne Cardozo – was given a four-year deferred sentence, which means that after her guilty plea to a felony count of sexual assault on a child by a person in a position of trust, she won't go to prison unless she violates probation terms and she'll have the chance to remove the conviction from her record in the future.
Deputy District Attorney Peter Reed even said the 17-year-old should have to shoulder a share of the blame, because he had a history of "seducing older women."
While the sentencing often appears to consider the trauma to the victims as negligible, those victims don't often feel that way.
In the Utah case, the mother of the male student told the court: "I've lost that child. I don't have him anymore. He told me, 'Mom, you'll never have him back again. I'm a changed person.'"
He's stopped participating in sports, which he once loved, and cannot even go to school; he's doing home study to get a diploma.
Boys, especially, generally aren't considered victims. Gary Searle, a prosecutor in Utah, said males just are not seen that way "and it's especially true when it's a female victimizing the male. Some people say, 'How were you a victim in something every boy dreams about?' I think we as a society have, for years and years, said, 'A boy is a boy, and a boy does what a boy does.' We pat them on the back, we want them to be out there doing things as men. Our daughters we want to be treated as vulnerable and innocent."
Miller said her organization does work with providing support for males who have been victimized, and she recently had a conversation with a 53-year-old man who'd been assaulted by a female teacher when he was 12.
"He's had numerous marriages but he never established a normal relationship," she told WND. "He's suffered his entire life."
An official with a Utah Center for Safe and Healthy Families said boys who are raped are injured emotionally, just like girls.
"These romanticized notions of being broken into the sexual world by the kind and caring older woman are just wrong because it doesn't work that way. Most of these women have severe psychological problems, or they wouldn't be attracted to young boys," said Julie Bradshaw.
Miller went so far as to blame the second generation of crime on the past assaults by teachers on students.
"Boys are less likely to be believed," Miller said. "Boys end up suffering more severe psychological damage."
"Because they are not able to report with the expectation they're going to receive justice like a girl would, they are not provided services that girls are provided, and they are less likely to go forward and have normal relationships with women, what ends up happening in many cases with boys [they] overcompensate and end up becoming domestically violent abusers, rapists – because of the fact a woman dominated them," she said.
In a column published on the SESAME website, Stephen Braveman, a therapist, writes that when teachers assault, the child perceives that no one would believe an accusation against him or her.
"The vow of secrecy not to tell, not to report it, is sealed if the child does speak up and is not believed. So, as the victim of teacher abuse grows up, they learn to hold on to many self-defeating patterns. This may include poor self-esteem, lack of assertiveness, inability to stand up for one's rights, inability to speak in public, drug/alcohol abuse and a deliberate effort to sabotage relationships so as to not allow others to get 'too close' to them. Trust is a big issue."
Besides the injury to children, there have been legal judgments that should make educational institutions want the highest level of scrutiny for teachers. One case in West Virginia resulted in a $2.25 million judge against a school, another one in North Carolina was $450,000, Miller said.
Shakeshaft's report said in New York state alone, more than $18.7 million was paid from 1996-2001 to students who were sexually abused by educators, and that does not include attorneys' fees and investigators costs.
The wink-wink attitude, many believe, has aggravated the situation, especially in light of that attitude on the part of judges. In New Jersey, Judge Bruce Gaeta sentenced a 43-year-old women for having sex with a child – a 13-year-old male student.
"I really don't see the harm that was done here," the judge proclaimed, "and certainly society doesn't need to be worried. I do not believe she is a sexual predator. It's just something between two people that clicked beyond the teacher-student relationship."
She got probation.
In Kansas, U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten openly questioned why he had to follow the law. "Where is the clear, credible evidence that underage sex is always injurious? If you tell me because it is illegal, I reject that," Marten said, according to wire reports.
One of the conclusions that was drawn by Shakeshaft as she analyzed the study data available was that more work needs to be done on it.
"Educator sexual misconduct is woefully understudied," Shakeshaft says in her report. "We have scant data on incidence and even less on descriptions of predators and targets. There are many questions that call for answers."
Pamela Rogers Turner, 27: Former model and beauty-pageant contestant also taught at Centertown Elementary School in McMinnville, Tenn. She was arrested in February 2005 for allegedly having a three-month sexual relationship with a 13-year-old boy. She resigned her teaching position and was charged with 15 counts of sexual battery and 13 counts of statutory rape. Originally sentenced to 270 days in August 2005, she got in additional trouble in April 2006 for sending text messages, nude photos, and sex videos of herself to the same boy while using her father's cellphone. In July 2006, she was sentenced to serve eight years for violating her probation, and in January 2007, was given an additional two years for sending the photos.
Miller would suggest it also is under-prosecuted.
"First, parents can demand that state laws are enacted that require reporting of these cases, whether a teacher resigns or not," she said. "The case should never be closed because a teacher resigns. The first duty is to protect children and educate them. If they are doing anything other than that, they are protecting a perpetrator, allowing a teacher to move on and become a mobile molester."
The education system is "very good" at reporting abuse when teachers suspect a family member is guilty, Miller said, "but when it comes to reporting their own teachers, they are failing miserable. They are not following mandatory reporting laws."
One solution would be to make the laws strong enough that a teacher could lose a teaching certificate for not reporting. "They're not going to risk their own profession for the sake of a perpetrating teacher," Miller said. "They're more likely to report that teacher as they should."
Good background checks – that can be repeated periodically – also would help, she said. "Administrators need to make unannounced visits to classrooms, especially during teachers' prep periods, and watch their activities with students. If they're spending an inordinate amount of time with one or two particular students, the administrator needs to watch that closely."
And parents must be part of the solution, she said.
"Parents need to be watching behaviors of teachers with children. If a teacher is wielding too much authority or having too much influence over a child, it's a warning sign," she said. Other signs would be secret telephone calls, e-mails and the like.
Guidance counselors also can help. "If a student is in a teacher's class, and involved in extracurricular activities that teacher is supervising, also working as an aide in that classroom, and seems to be spending a lot of extra time with that teacher, that needs to be watched."
The "grooming" process that a teacher will use to prepare a student for assaults is the same as what a child molester on the Internet would do: build a relationship, build trust, start exerting influence, make threats, use the power of the system, breaking down boundaries, engaging in inappropriate conversation, etc. Miller said.
"They know exactly how to do it. The only difference is that it's taking place in person in the classroom," she said.
The one circumstance that makes it worse for the children, Miller said, is that an offender often will use similar techniques on the child's parents, ingratiating himself or herself, so the parents will trust this person with their child, and if an accusation is made, be less likely to believe it.
Shakeshaft cites the case of one teacher, Kenneth DeLuca, who was convicted of sexually abusing 13 students between the ages of 10 and 18 over a period of 21 years. Although nearly all of the students reported the abuse at the time it was occurring, school officials ignored the accusations. "Overwhelmingly, the girls experienced a disastrous response when they told about DeLuca’s behavior," said the report. "Many were disbelieved, some were told to leave schools, parents were allegedly threatened with lawsuits."
"They groom everybody," Miller said. "When you read these stories, over and over again, community leaders and other parents are lauding and applauding this exemplary teacher and can't even comprehend this [allegation]," Miller said.
Shakeshaft's conclusions agreed:
The educators who target elementary school children are often professionally accomplished and even celebrated. Particularly compared to their non-abusing counterparts, they hold a disproportionate number of awards. It is common to find that educators who have been sexually abusing children are also the same educators who display on their walls a community "Excellence in Teaching" award or a "Teacher of the Year" certificate. This popularity confounds district officials and community members and prompts them to ignore allegations on the belief that “outstanding teachers” cannot be abusers. Many educators who abuse work at being recognized as good professionals in order to be able to sexually abuse children. For them, being a good educator is the path to children, especially those who abuse elementary and younger middle school students.
The ultimate solution? Could be a voucher system, Miller said. Let teachers and schools compete for students, and the ones who do cause problems soon will be rooted out by the very establishment they belong to, because a school required to compete for students wouldn't be able to tolerate such behavior.
Shakeshaft's report also sought further – and much more detailed – study of the problem so that it can be addressed, but to date no action has resulted.
And that case in West Virginia that resulted in a boy's death? Here are the details:
Edgar Friedrichs had been accused – during his first teaching position in Interboro School District in Delaware County – of sexual misconduct. The school board told a parent the board could do nothing and the teacher resigned.
That parent got a telephone call from private investigator Dan Barber nearly 30 years later. He said Friedrichs was on trial for molesting two 11-year-old boys, and then described how 12-year-old Jeremy Bell and Friedrichs had been on a fishing trip when Bell died of an overdose of a drug that had not been prescribed to him. Authorities accused Friedrichs of drugging the child in order to assault him.
Friedrichs later was sent to prison, and Barber discovered that Friedrichs had gotten a letter of recommendation and had worked in a large number of school districts since the original complaints were voiced, moving to another location each time allegations surfaced for 30 years.
"They simply passed the trash over the mountains," the investigator said." (Bob Unruh/WorldNetDaily.com 1/23/07)
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Female Teachers Punished
Posted
By:
Caxy
on 1/16/2007 10:15:14 PM
Utah sex-crimes cases highlight stereotypes
It seemed like a bad week for female educators in Utah — three of them appeared in court over charges of sexual misconduct with underage male students.
For prosecutors, this is a simple matter. A crime is a crime.
But for some people, the idea of a female teacher engaging in sexual activity with a boy does not strike them as criminal.
Following the sentencing this week of Melinda Lee Deluca to 90 days in jail, several bloggers on the KSL-TV comment board cracked jokes about how "lucky" this boy was and wondered where such teachers were when they were in high school.
Deluca, 30, on Wednesday was sentenced by 3rd District Judge Stephen Roth after pleading guilty to third-degree felony attempted sexual abuse in connection with sex with a 16-year-old student. Her teaching license has been revoked.
Meanwhile, in Tooele on Tuesday, 3rd District Judge Mark Kouris ordered former math remediation lab coordinator Leslie Baird, 42, to spend three months at the diagnostic unit in the Utah State Prison. She will be sentenced April 17. She previously had pleaded guilty to second-degree felony forcible sexual abuse involving two male students, both 17. She was not a certified teacher.
And on Friday, Kathryn Louise Parmley, 42, was scheduled for a roll-call hearing in Farmington before 2nd District Judge Rodney Page. Parmley, who formerly worked at the Davis County School District's Family Enrichment Center in Kaysville, has not been convicted of any crime. The Davis County Attorney's Office has charged her with two third-degree felony counts of unlawful sexual conduct with a 16- or 17-year-old.
She is accused of sexual activity with a 17-year-old male who was not her student. Her attorney insists she is innocent.
In the cases involving Deluca and Baird, the mothers of two victims spoke to the judges in court, and both described identical effects that the sexual relations had on their sons. Their once-happy teenagers are now deeply depressed, they no longer take part in the sports they once loved, their school work has suffered and other students shun them.
Lingering stereotypes
Gary Searle, prosecutor with the Tooele County Attorney's Office, said stereotypes linger about males and females when it comes to sex crimes.
"People just do not view males as victims in these types of cases, and it's especially true when it's a female victimizing the male," Searle said. "Some people say, 'How were you a victim in something every boy dreams about?'
"I think we as a society have, for years and years, said, 'A boy is a boy, and a boy does what a boy does.' We pat them on the back, we want them to be out there doing things as men. Our daughters we want to be treated as vulnerable and innocent."
However, Searle said he has seen a slow change in this attitude toward boys and a greater inclination on the part of young male students to speak up, although they often pay a price for doing so in the form of ridicule from classmates.
"I think we're being more open in society to the fact that juvenile males can be victims also," he said.
Increased media coverage also has heightened public awareness of sexual mistreatment of students, he said.
Julie Bradshaw, director of Primary Children's Medical Center's Center for Safe and Healthy Families, said boys who are raped are emotionally damaged, just like girls who are raped, and that is compounded by society's overall lack of acceptance for the male victim.
"What's important in any sexual relationship, even with grown-ups, is that the power differentials are equal. When you have a grown-up and a child — and a teenager is a child — you can never have equal power differentials, and that's the problem," Bradshaw said.
Minor males, simply because of their youth, do not have the ability to truly consent.
"These romanticized notions of being broken into the sexual world by the kind and caring older woman are just wrong because it doesn't work that way," Bradshaw said. "Most of these women have severe psychological problems, or they wouldn't be attracted to young boys."
Bradshaw said the sexual abuse of a boy or girl can produce depression, possibly even of a suicidal nature, as well as post traumatic stress syndrome, anxiety and other issues. It also can have ill effects on their ability to engage in a trusting relationship later in life.
The key is how people treat the sexual-abuse victim after the incident, said Bradshaw, adding that she strongly recommends professional counseling.
Perhaps the most widely publicized teacher-student situation was the notorious case of former Washington teacher Mary Kay Letourneau. Married and the mother of four, Letourneau, at age 34, began engaging in sex in 1996 with Vili Fualaau, when he was 13.
She was sentenced to prison for rape, had two children by Fualaau while he was a juvenile, and ended up marrying him in highly publicized nuptials bankrolled by "Entertainment Tonight."
Teacher-student liaisons have become fodder for Hollywood
Letourneau's case became a television movie. On Friday, the big-screen film "Notes on a Scandal," about a female teacher having an affair with a male student, opened in Salt Lake City.
'One is too many'
Despite the international attention to the topic, education officials suggest there are not necessarily more female predators who are teachers.
Jean Hill investigates complaints about teachers for the Utah Professional Practices Advisory Commission and is a prosecutor for the Utah State Office of Education.
"I don't know if there is more (female teacher/male student crime), but the females seem to make the news," Hill said. "We still have that idea that women don't do this."
It is true that male teachers misbehave more often than female teachers, according to state statistics. Hill said that in 2000-2006, the state investigated 45 male educators and 15 females for sexual activity with students.
With more than 20,000 teachers certified in Utah, these are relatively small numbers.
"It's not an epidemic," Hill said, "but even one is too many."
Hill said female teacher/male student situations used to be swept under the rug.
"Now we find out about it," she said. "I don't think it's a growing problem, but there is a growing awareness."
Hill said that although such sex crimes are rare, they hurt many people besides the young victim.
"What people overlook is that this tears apart the family, it tears apart the school," she said. "When a teacher does this, it causes great harm across the student body and the faculty. It's school-wide." (Linda Thomson/Deseret Morning News 1/15/07)
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Counselor Sentenced For Having Sex With Autistic Student
Posted
By:
Prince
on 1/11/2007 9:56:40 AM
"A former school counselor who pleaded guilty to engaging in sexual misconduct with an autistic boy was sentenced Wednesday to six years in prison with four years suspended.
Becci M. Hill, of Martinsville, was accused of having a sexual relationship with the 15-year-old, whom she had mentored at one point, according to authorities. She was a special-needs counselor with the Wayne Township school district in Indianapolis.
Hill was arrested in July after a police officer saw her and the teen engaging in sexual activity in a car on a rural road, according to the Marion County prosecutor's office. She was 31 at the time.
In addition to sentencing her to prison, a judge ordered Hill to serve three years of probation and register as a sex offender upon her release." (TheIndyChannel.com 1/10/07)
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Teacher Charged With Forcible Sexual Abuse
Posted
By:
Prince
on 1/11/2007 9:54:26 AM
"Salt Lake County prosecutors filed criminal charges against a high school teacher accused of having a sexual relationship with a student. The teacher in question taught sign language at Copper Hills High school.
The teacher was fired in December. School officials won't say why, but that was just a few weeks after she allegedly twice had sexual intercourse with a 16-year old male student.
Melinda DeLuca taught American Sign Language. The alleged victim was one of her sign language students.
Four witnesses told investigators they saw the teacher and student in a car, kissing at a park near the school. Court papers say the victim himself told investigators he had sexual intercourse with his teacher twice. Once it was in the car at the park, and a few days before that at her house. She allegedly invited him there during school hours.
Deluca has been ordered to appear for booking in the next few days. The two charges are second-degree felonies." (John Hollenhorst/KSL.com 1/9/07)
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Former Teacher Sentenced To 90 Days For Sex With Student
Posted
By:
Prince
on 1/11/2007 9:52:44 AM
"A former high school teacher who had sex with one of her students is sentenced to jail.
Clarification: An earlier version of this story indicated Melinda Deluca was not ordered to register as a sex offender. The judge did order that she be registered as a sex offender, but he did not issue that order in open court. The order was contained in the written conditions of her probation.
Melinda Deluca was sentenced for having sex with a 16 year old boy, who was one of her students at Copper Hills High School. But the judge gave her until noon tomorrow to report to the jail, so she can explain the situation to her two young children.
It is not very often that we hear a victim's family offer forgiveness to a defendant, but that's what we heard today, even though his mother says the boy has suffered greatly and that it's created a real hardship for his entire family.
This case goes back about a year and a half, when Melinda Deluca was arrested, after she had sex with the 16 year old boy on at least two occasions.
The case took a bizarre turn this summer, when Deluca was found beaten and had to be airlifted to the hospital, claiming two teenage boys assaulted her as payback. It turns out, she made it all up, apparently to get sympathy.
In October, she took a plea deal to reduced charges and today was sentenced.
The boy's mother told the judge how her son was ridiculed by other students and teachers and was forced to leave school and is not the happy son she said he was before the crime.
The judge called it a terrible event, but suspended the five years in prison Deluca could have faced and instead gave her 90 days in the county jail. She will also be on probation for three years and will undergo sex offender treatment and have to comply with sex offender special conditions. The judge did not specifically tell her she must register as a sex offender, but Eyewitness News found in the fine print that it will be a requirement of her probation.
The judge planned for Deluca to go straight to jail, but was persuaded by her attorney to give her until tomorrow at noon, to tell her two young children goodbye, first.
As for the victim's family, they say they are relieved this situation is finally over." (Sam Penrod/KSL.com 1/10/07)
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Teacher – And Husband – In Sex-With-Students Arrest
Posted
By:
Professor
on 12/18/2006 10:17:28 AM
Woman charged with aggravated assault against 5 boys – some occured in classroom
"A Houston-area teacher and her husband have been arrested for sexually assaulting students at an elementary school in 2004.
Brandy Lynn Gonzales, 27, appeared in court yesterday for a probable-cause hearing and had her bail set at $320,000 for three counts of aggravated assault and two counts of indecency involving a child. Her husband, Johnny Gonzales, 31, waived his hearing. Both are scheduled to appear in court again on Jan. 12 according to the Houston Chronicle.
According to Assistant District Attorney Denise Oncken, Brandy Gonzales had a reputation among her young students for flirting with them and spending time with them during non-school hours.
"She did ask several of the students to go to the movie theaters with her," Oncken said. "The parents were evidently aware of that. Several did take their children to the mall and thought it's probably a nice thing."
Prosecutors allege that Gonzales met a student in February 2004 at a local movie theater, where she performed oral sex on the boy as well as another student at the theater.
"Several of the kids would actually see what was going on with other boys at movie theaters as well as in the classroom," Oncken said.
Another one of her students claims he touched Gonzales' genitals in her classroom that same month. Several students alleged Gonzales would touch them under their desks during class.
"Evidently, according to the victims, she was quite a flirt in the classroom," Oncken said.
In June 2004, Gonzales allegedly performed oral sex on a 13-year-old boy before having intercourse with him. Johnny Gonzales is also charged with having performed sex acts with the teen.
"It's my understanding that both of them were engaging in sexual acts with one of the victims at their residence," Oncken said.
Prosecutors told the judge they have sufficient evidence of other sexual encounters between the Gonzaleses and the five children to file further charges.
"There were multiple offenses against the victims," Oncken said.
Teacher 'sexpidemic'
The phenomenon of teachers accused or convicted of having sex with their students has come to the forefront of national and international news in recent years." (WorldNetDaily.com 12/15/06)
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Teacher – And Husband – In Sex-With-Students Arrest
Posted
By:
Professor
on 12/18/2006 10:17:28 AM
Woman charged with aggravated assault against 5 boys – some occured in classroom
"A Houston-area teacher and her husband have been arrested for sexually assaulting students at an elementary school in 2004.
Brandy Lynn Gonzales, 27, appeared in court yesterday for a probable-cause hearing and had her bail set at $320,000 for three counts of aggravated assault and two counts of indecency involving a child. Her husband, Johnny Gonzales, 31, waived his hearing. Both are scheduled to appear in court again on Jan. 12 according to the Houston Chronicle.
According to Assistant District Attorney Denise Oncken, Brandy Gonzales had a reputation among her young students for flirting with them and spending time with them during non-school hours.
"She did ask several of the students to go to the movie theaters with her," Oncken said. "The parents were evidently aware of that. Several did take their children to the mall and thought it's probably a nice thing."
Prosecutors allege that Gonzales met a student in February 2004 at a local movie theater, where she performed oral sex on the boy as well as another student at the theater.
"Several of the kids would actually see what was going on with other boys at movie theaters as well as in the classroom," Oncken said.
Another one of her students claims he touched Gonzales' genitals in her classroom that same month. Several students alleged Gonzales would touch them under their desks during class.
"Evidently, according to the victims, she was quite a flirt in the classroom," Oncken said.
In June 2004, Gonzales allegedly performed oral sex on a 13-year-old boy before having intercourse with him. Johnny Gonzales is also charged with having performed sex acts with the teen.
"It's my understanding that both of them were engaging in sexual acts with one of the victims at their residence," Oncken said.
Prosecutors told the judge they have sufficient evidence of other sexual encounters between the Gonzaleses and the five children to file further charges.
"There were multiple offenses against the victims," Oncken said.
Teacher 'sexpidemic'
The phenomenon of teachers accused or convicted of having sex with their students has come to the forefront of national and international news in recent years." (WorldNetDaily.com 12/15/06)
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Teacher Accused Of Sexual Contact With Student
Posted
By:
DOC
on 11/30/2006 9:29:42 AM
"(CBS) MISSION VIEJO, Calif. An English teacher at Trabuco Hills High School was free on bail Monday while authorities continued investigating allegations that she had "substantial sexual contact" with a male student, a sheriff's spokesman said.
Alyssa Ann Johnson, 31, of Tustin, was arrested Wednesday evening at her home by sheriff's investigators, who received word of the allegation through officials at the Mission Viejo school, according to sheriff's spokesman Jim Amormino.
"We heard about it through school social services," he said.
"He took an English class from her," Amormino added, declining to release any additional information that could identify the youth, other than to say that he is "older than 14 and younger than 18."
Johnson, who was booked on suspicion of oral copulation, posted $50,000 bail and was released Thanksgiving Day, Amormino said.
Johnson has been placed on administrative leave from the job she held about four years, the spokesman said.
Farrah Emami of the Orange County District Attorney's Office said the case has not yet been presented to her office for charges." (CBS2.com 11/27/06)
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Harlem High Teacher Charged, Resigns
Posted
By:
MadDog
on 11/25/2006 11:04:32 AM
"The Columbia County Sheriff's Office says a complaint has been filed against a Harlem High School teacher. The complaint accuses Melissa Chase of having an alleged inappropriate relationship with a 16-year-old student.
Chase, also a coach at the school, faces charges of sexual assault on a student according to the Sheriff’s Office, a felony.
The Columbia County Sheriff's Office says the teen's mother filed the report.
Columbia County School Superintendent Tommy Price says he found out about the complaint today. In a press release, Price says the teacher has resigned from her job Harlem High. He adds that a report will be filed with the Professional Standard’s Commission." (News Channel 6 - WJBF-TV 11/13/06)
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Former Teacher's Aid Accused Of Sex With Student
Posted
By:
TBird
on 11/11/2006 10:57:18 PM
"RAINIER, Ore. -- A former teacher’s assistant accused of having sex with a 15-year-old boy was indicted earlier this week, according to a Longview, Wash. newspaper.
The Daily News reported that 35-year-old Christine Marie Johanson, who worked at Hudson Park Elementary School, allegedly had a sexual relationship with a freshman at Rainier Junior/Senior High School. Further, the indictment also alleges that Johanson forced the boy to have sex with her.
She pleaded innocent Monday to 10 counts of third-degree rape, two counts of third-degree sodomy, 12 counts of second-degree sexual abuse and two counts of furnishing liquor to a minor, according to The Daily News.
The district said Johanson was fired in September, and was ordered to stay away from the boy and the school.
The case echoes that of an infamous former Pacific Northwest teacher and her student.
Mary Kay Fualaau, then Mary Kay Letourneau, was convicted of child rape for having sex with her student in 1996. He was 13 at the time and later fathered two of her children. She served more than seven years in prison and was released in 2004. The two recently got married." (Antonia Giedwoyn/KGW.com 11/9/06)
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Whidbey Island Man Pleads Guilty To Luring
Posted
By:
UFO
on 10/26/2006 12:06:25 AM
Girl flew to wrong Washington for meeting
"A Whidbey Island man has pleaded guilty to charges of using the Internet to entice a 14- year-old girl to travel for sex -- a plan that went awry when she flew to Washington, D.C., instead of Washington state.
Airport police at Dulles International Airport contacted the FBI in January 2005 after the girl, who lives in Chicago, showed up upset in Washington, D.C. She had decided to use her own money to fly sooner than had been agreed upon, authorities said.
John Leonard Young, 46, of Coupeville faces at least five years in prison but could serve up to 30 years after he is sentenced in January.
In a plea agreement filed Monday, Young admitted to talking with the girl over the Internet and telephone for about two weeks, the U.S. Attorney's Office said in a statement.
Some of their communications were later recovered and were found to contain "bold, detailed discussions about sex."
Young urged the girl to remove the hard drive of her computer to cover their tracks and arranged for the girl to visit him Jan. 21, the statement said.
"Young used a business credit card to pay for a plane ticket for the girl to travel to Seattle to be with him," the statement said.
After the girl arrived in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 12, the FBI obtained a search warrant for the computers in Young's mother's home, where he was staying. Authorities said they recovered his communications with the girl and more than 50 images of child pornography.
The transcripts of a detention hearing in May during which Young was placed under electronic surveillance show he originally denied he had sexual intentions toward the girl. They also reveal he admitted to using methamphetamine.
While the investigation was ongoing in July 2005, Young left Whidbey Island and lived in his van in San Diego, the transcripts show. He was arrested by police and returned to Washington state.
Young's sentencing is scheduled for Jan. 25." (Amy Rolph/SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER 10/24/06)
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Former Teacher Indicted For Sex Acts With Three Teen Boys
Posted
By:
MadDog
on 10/19/2006 2:20:28 PM
"A Wythe County grand jury indicted a former middle school teacher on sex-related charges involving three teenage boys, court officials said Tuesday.
Karen Susan Patton, 42, was indicted late Monday on four counts of carnal knowledge and one count of nonforcible sodomy. She also is charged with two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
Patton taught English and was a cheerleading coach at Scott Memorial Middle School. She resigned in January after being charged with having carnal knowledge of and oral sex with a 13-year-old after the boy's parents discovered a letter she allegedly had written the boy and online instant messages and e-mails between them.
In February, Patton was charged with engaging in sexual acts with two other 13-year-old boys, one of them twice.
A trial is scheduled for March 6." (AP/DailyPress.com 10/17/06)
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Lesbian Teacher Faces Assault Charge
Posted
By:
MadDog
on 10/19/2006 2:18:35 PM
Probe leads police to student website
Peel Regional Police are investigating a website containing remarks written by people claiming to be students, about a Streetsville high school teacher now charged with sexually assaulting one of her female students.
The student-run website, ratemyteachers.ca, allows students and parents to anonymously post their opinions of educators and other school staff, across North America.
Today, several website visitors claiming to be students and one parent posted comments about 36-year-old Leslie Merlino, just a day after sex assault charges against her were made public.
A student claimed to be asked by the teacher to visit her after class on various occasions.
There are also postings from students praising Merlino, describing her as an "excellent" French teacher.
Others wrote that she was a "cool" and "fun" teacher who told students she never wanted kids because her students were "so loud and obnoxious."
Students who submitted comments to the site gave her an overall rating of 4 out of 5, one of the highest ratings for all teachers at the school.
"She's a totally cool teacher, so funny and her classes are fun," one student said on the site.
Another student said the teacher was "extremely nice" - generous with marks - and makes people willing to try to participate."
A parent with a teenaged son who attends Streetsville Secondary School, also submitted remarks to the website defending the languages teacher.
"My son was very upset about the charges. He said she was a great teacher. Hopefully the trial will allow Ms. Merlino a fair chance to respond to the accusations," the parent wrote.
Police said they want to get in touch with the authors of the remarks.
Merlino is charged with sexual exploitation and sexual assault.
The charges come after a female student at the school, aged 17, began chatting online and exchanging emails with a woman on several occasions this month.
Peel Cst. Pete Brandwood said the emails contained "sexually-explicit content."
The computer exchanges also resulted in a meeting between the two this month, in which the student claims she was sexually assaulted.
Peel Police investigated the allegations, which were made by the girl's parents, and made an arrest." (Louie Rosella/THE MISSISSAUGA NEWS 10/18/06)
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Teacher Accused Of Sex With Teen
Posted
By:
MadDog
on 10/19/2006 2:16:44 PM
"A Metro Atlanta teacher has been arrested, accused of having sex with a 17-year-old student.
Angela Coffey taught at Meadowcreek High School in Norcross. She is now out on bond, and out of a job.
Parents picking up their kids from Meadowcreek High School reacted with shock upon hearing that the teacher allegedly had sex with one of her students.
“Actually, I’m going to call the school tomorrow morning at Meadowcreek,” said one parent.
The 33-year-old Coffey taught English and coached cheerleading at Meadowcreek. Police say from March to August of this year, she had inappropriate sexual contact with a 17-year-old boy.
“She really needs to be punished,” said parent Latonia Carroll. “Really, if a man did it, (he’d) get punished. If a woman does it, she should get punished.”
“Those who know her find it hard to believe.
“I just can’t imagine that she would do that with a student at Meadowcreek? Wow. That’s amazing,” said parent Cheri West.
Largely, students had nothing but praise for her.
“She helped me a lot when I went through a lot of struggles last year,” said student Robert Rojas. “I don’t blame her for what she did.”
Coffey is at home after posting $16,600 bail. She resigned from her teaching position on Monday." (Paul Crawley/11Alive.com 10/18/06)
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Woman Has Sex With 5th-Grader, As Well As His Dad
Posted
By:
Caxy
on 10/18/2006 7:21:07 AM
In past 5 years, 200 cases of teacher sexual abuse of students in North Carolina
"The Johnston County schoolteacher accused of raping an 11-year-old student in 2003 also had an affair with the boy's father, Johnston County Sheriff Steve Bizzell said Monday.
Rebecca Withrow, a fifth-grade teacher at Polenta Elementary School in the Cleveland community, is charged with rape, indecent liberties and committing a sex offense against a student. Withrow surrendered to authorities Friday, two days after resigning.
Bizzell said Monday that investigators collected physical evidence in Withrow's classroom that helped substantiate the boy's story of abuse. The sheriff would not specify the evidence but said it was gathered in the spot where the boy said he had sex with his teacher.
Detectives launched an investigation of Withrow late last month after the boy's mother reported the incident to Johnston County Sheriff's deputies. Bizzell said the mother also told detectives that her husband had an affair with Withrow when her son was a student in Withrow's class during the 2002-03 school year. Authorities said they didn't know when the relationship between Withrow and the boy's father began or ended.
The relationship with the father was well known within the school community, several parents have said since Withrow's arrest. Christine Livingston, a teaching assistant and parent, said in an interview that she complained to school administrators about their affair when she resigned in December 2004.
School administrators put Withrow on paid leave Sept. 29 after the complaint from the boy's mother.
The boy's mother declined to comment when reached Monday.
The News & Observer is not naming the mother to protect the identity of her son; the newspaper generally does not name victims of reported sex offenses.
Withrow, 30, wearing glasses and long, frizzy hair, stood before District Court Judge Addie Rawls on Monday morning, shackled at the ankles, while her attorney promised the judge that she could be trusted to behave outside jail. Withrow rubbed her nails against a table while her attorney, J. Michael McGuinness of Bladen County, talked about Withrow's teaching skills and asked the judge for flexibility.
Withrow stared straight ahead and didn't say a word.
"Your honor, she needs to be with her young children," McGuinness said.
$750,000 bail stands
Rawls refused to lower Withrow's $750,000 bail and ordered her back to jail.
Withrow was a well-regarded fifth-grade teacher who also served as president of the school's parent-teacher association. She was praised by students and parents alike.
"If you asked me Thursday which teacher I wanted my child to have, it would have been her," said Kim Dayberry, who has two children at Polenta, including a fourth-grader.
Instead, the scandal has pushed parents to have uncomfortable conversations with their children. Dayberry had an early birds-and-bees talk with her 9-year-old and explained that she should tell someone she can trust if an adult tries to touch her inappropriately.
Her daughter's response: "I can trust my teacher, right?"
Most of the time, Dayberry said.
Alone in classroom
Withrow's fifth-grade classroom sat at the far end of a long hallway, the farthest in its wing from the central administrators' office.
In 2003, she had plenty of time alone with the boy during one-on-one tutoring sessions, Bizzell said. He said Withrow abused the boy several times from February to June of that year, raping and molesting him in the classroom during the regular school day. It's not clear whether Withrow was also dating the boy's father at the time.
Withrow's marriage dissolved during this period. According to Durham County divorce records, Withrow's husband of six years left her in May 2003. When their divorce was finalized in August 2004, Withrow and her husband agreed to split custody of their two daughters, now 7 and 9.
If Withrow is convicted, she could spend more than 22 years in prison.
More cases reported
During the past five years, more than 200 teachers, coaches or school administrators in North Carolina have been charged with sexually abusing their students.
So far this school year, 28 cases of sexual behavior between teachers and students have been reported to the state Department of Public Instruction, said Harry Wilson, an attorney for the state school board. Throughout most of the 1990s, there were fewer than 20 such cases a year.
Wilson attributes the increase in part to victims' being more willing to report the crimes.
"It's hard to know whether they've spiked or whether there is a greater willingness for people to come forward and say this has happened and this is wrong," Wilson said." (Mandy Locke and Marti Maguire/NewsObserver.com 10/17/06)
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Woman Guilty Of Sex With 14-Year-Old Boy
Posted
By:
Groner
on 10/3/2006 11:59:26 PM
'This is a proclivity on her part. This is something she chooses to do'.
"Despite assertions she never had sex with her 14-year-old student, a teacher has been found guilty of the offense by a jury in Fort Smith, Ark.
Deanna Bobo, 38, was convicted yesterday on two counts of first-degree sexual assault, and was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
As WND previously reported, Bobo, a married mother of five, was a special education teacher at Raymond E. Wells Junior High School in Greenwood, Ark., who allegedly had sex twice last year with a boy in his own bed while his parents were not home.
The investigation later grew into the possibility she had relations with three other juveniles in another school district, but this verdict only dealt with the first victim.
"This is a proclivity on her part. This is something she chooses to do," prosecutor Dan Shue said in closing arguments, according to the Fort Smith Times Record.
Defense attorney Shannon Foster said investigators were like "Keystone Cops on a witch hunt," alleging they mishandled evidence and used "Nazi-like" techniques to question children and set out to "make the evidence fit the crime."
Foster said the alleged victim initially told police he and Bobo had sex twice in his home, but on the stand he said they had sex once in her car and once in his home.
"Her (Bobo's) story is the only one that hasn't changed," Foster said.
Bobo said after her case became publicized, it became difficult to live in her hometown. She would stay at home, wearing the same clothes for days.
"I pretty much hid out on my back porch and did a lot of praying," she said.
Teacher 'sexpidemic'
The phenomenon of teachers accused or convicted of having sex with their students has come to the forefront of national and international news in recent years." (WorldNetDaily.com 9/27/06)
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Grand Jury Declines To Indict Female Teacher
Posted
By:
MadDog
on 9/23/2006 11:15:34 PM
Former Miss Texas contestant charged for sexual relations with student, 18
"Another attractive female teacher, charged with having a sexual relationship with a male student, will not be serving any jail time – indeed, a Denton County, Texas, grand jury has refused to issue an indictment of the 25-year-old woman.
The arrest of Amy McElhenney, a Spanish teacher and cross-country coach at Hebron High School, made national headlines in June when she was charged for sex with an 18-year-old student, with the merits of the case against her being debated on Good Morning America, Inside Edition, Court TV and Fox News' "O'Reilly Factor."
While the age of consent in Texas is 17 years, a state law bans sexual relationships between educators and students even if the student is of legal age and the relationship is consensual. If convicted, McElhenny could have faced 20 years in prison.
The law, passed in 2003, has been criticized as too harsh by its critics, even the legislator who proposed the original bill.
Rep. Helen Giddings told the Dallas Morning News she intended her measure to include only students 17 and younger because she wanted to protect high school students not old enough to vote or serve in the military, but the bill was amended by other lawmakers who believed any sexual contact with a student was an abuse of power by an educator.
"If they're a student I just think they're off bounds regardless of their age," said Rep. Warren Chisum, who led the fight to broaden the law. "I felt like if we didn't do that we just virtually made it open season on students that are 18 years old."
The Denton County grand jury refused to enforce it in this case, siding with those who believe "age of consent" means precisely that.
McElhenney joins a growing number of female teachers who have had sexual relations with their students and avoided jail time or any other severe penalty." (WorldNetDaily.com 9/22/06)
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'Sexy Substitute' Gets No Jail Time
Posted
By:
Professor
on 9/21/2006 10:02:49 PM
Judge admits if case involved male teacher with female student, prison would be likely
"A female high-school substitute teacher in Utah will serve no time behind bars for performing oral sex on a 17-year-old male student, despite comments from the judge that a man would have likely gone to prison.
"If this was a 29-year-old male and a 17-year-old female, I would be inclined to order some incarceration," noted 3rd District Judge Mark Kouris during sentencing yesterday for Cameo Patch.
Patch was a fill-in instructor at Tooele High School, and was arrested after an informant disclosed her alleged relationship with the boy.
She was put on probation for 36 months, and ordered to obtain a psycho-sexual evaluation, as well as pay a $2,000 fine.
"The only thing I can say is that I understand the mistake that I made," Patch told the judge, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. "It opened my eyes to the life I want to live for myself and my [three] kids. I'll never wind up in this situation again."
She and her husband divorced last month.
Patch and the boy reportedly met in the classroom, but engaged in the alleged wrongdoing off campus after school. All indications are the sexual activity was consensual.
According to the police report, "... [Patch] and the juvenile met in a local restaurant, exchanged phone numbers, and arranged to meet to talk later in the evening. During the course of the meeting between the two, sexual activity between [Patch] and the juvenile occurred."
The informant stated Patch "performed oral sex" on the student, but did not engage in sexual intercourse.
Defense attorney Jon Williams said the boy had "created the environment and invited the error," according to the Tribune.
Patch is the latest instructor following in the path of other female teachers who rape their students and receive little or no jail time. As WND reported in June, Kristen Margrif, 27, of Mayville, Mich., was given a one-year delayed sentence on three felony counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct with a student.
Margrif is also barred from schools and day-care facilities, will have to register as a sex offender for 25 years, and have no contact with people younger than 17 unless approved by a probation officer.
According to the original criminal complaint, Margrif and the teen had sexual relations eight times between June and July 2005. The trysts reportedly took place in her car or at the store where the boy had a summer job.
In March, former Florida teacher Debra LaFave also raised eyebrows after getting no jail time despite having sex with a 14-year-old boy.
"I think she should have gone to jail, I've stuck by that all along," the boy's father told the Fox News Channel. "It's a horrible, ugly thing that she's done."
"We're very upset. I don't feel there were enough consequences of actions. Hopefully all involved [are] conscious of the pain our son and family has endured," he continued. "There's no remorse at all. She didn't take responsibility for anything."
The phenomenon of teachers accused or convicted of having sex with their students has come to the forefront of national and international news in recent years." (WorldNetDaily.com 9/19/06)
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Patch Pleads Guilty In Other Sex Case
Posted
By:
Bernie
on 9/1/2006 11:52:18 AM
"Cameo Patch, the Tooele High School substitute teacher charged with sexual misconduct last January, has pleaded guilty to the charges of sexual battery against a then 17-year-old student, a class-A misdemeanor. Her sentencing hearing before Judge Mark Kouris in 3rd District Court in Tooele is scheduled for Sept. 18.
Patch was arrested in January and charged with "illegal sexual activity with a 16 or 17 year old," a third-degree felony. Her charges were reduced in exchange for her guilty plea.
Like Leslie Baird (see related story), Patch was accused of engaging in oral sex with a male student off school grounds.
"... [Patch] and the juvenile met in a local restaurant, exchanged phone numbers, and arranged to meet to talk later in the evening. During the course of the meeting between the two, sexual activity between [Patch] and the juvenile occurred," court documents claimed.
Deputy County Attorney Dave Cundick acknowledged that Patch's charges are significantly less than Baird's. He said this is because he could not prove that Patch held a "position of special trust" with her victim.
For her class-A misdemeanor, Patch faces a maximum sentence of one year in jail and up to $2,500 fine.
Patch and her husband started divorce proceedings in 3rd District Court shortly after being arrested in January." (TooeleTranscript.com 8/29/06)
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Delran Woman Denies Having Sex With Boy, 14
Posted
By:
TBird
on 9/1/2006 11:14:01 AM
MOUNT HOLLY
"A Delran woman who authorities say had a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old boy she met while she worked as a substitute teacher pleaded innocent Monday.
Angela Stellwag, 26, faces four counts of sexual assault and one count of endangering the welfare of a child.
She entered her plea before Superior Court Judge John Almeida.
Stellwag, the daughter of Delran Mayor Joseph Stellwag, met the boy in 2003 while he was a student in the Beverly School District, according to the Burlington County Prosecutor's Office.
The alleged sexual assaults occurred between July and September 2004, authorities said.
They occurred inside Stellwag's home and inside her car at locations in Edgewater Park, the prosecutor's office has said.
Stellwag became a substitute teacher for the Riverside School District in October 2004, by which time the boy had been transferred to the high school there.
Riverside school officials informed authorities when rumors arose about an alleged sexual relationship.
Stellwag was arrested in February 2005. She remains free on $20,000 bail.
Her next court appearance is scheduled for Oct. 30." (Carol Comegno/CourierPostOnline.com 8/29/06)
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DA Will Go After Teacher Accused Of Sex With Student
Posted
By:
FlyBoy
on 8/27/2006 10:54:01 AM
"The Cameron County District Attorney’s Office is pursuing a charge against a former Pace High School teacher accused of having an inappropriate relationship with one of her students.
The case involving Samantha Drash, 25, was scheduled for trial in May, but because the student and his family are refusing to cooperate with the authorities, District Attorney Armando Villalobos is trying to find another way to prosecute the case.
This is “too serious” of a case to dismiss, Villalobos said, adding that he doesn’t want to present a double standard in the way his office prosecutes cases against male teachers facing similar allegations.
The case against Hanna High School Steven Ray Brooks, 48, who is accused of involvement with a female student between March 2004 and May 2005, is scheduled for trial on Sept. 25.
In this case, the female student and family are cooperating with county prosecutors, Villalobos said.
Brooks was indicted on a charge of having an inappropriate sexual relationship with a student in November 2005.
Brooks remains on administrative leave with pay with the Brownsville Independent School District.
Drash was indicted in March by a Cameron County grand jury on charges of an inappropriate relationship between educator and student and sexual assault of a child.
The alleged incident between Drash and the student occurred sometime in November 2005, according to the indictment.
Brownsville Herald archives show that Drash resigned from her job amid the allegations on Feb. 27. She denies any wrongdoing.
Villalobos said the district attorney’s office is trying to work out an agreement with Drash and her attorney in which she gives up her teaching certificate and removes herself from coming in to contact with young boys.
If no agreement can be reached in the next two weeks, the case will go before a jury.
“We will take our chances” and take it to trial, Villalobos said." (Laura B. Martinez/BrownsvilleHerald.com 8/25/06)
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Evidence Inadmissible In Bobo Trial
Posted
By:
FlyBoy
on 8/9/2006 8:15:18 PM
"Much of the testimony prosecutors had hoped to introduce in the first-degree sexual assault trial of former Greenwood teacher Deanna Bobo was ruled inadmissible Tuesday at a pretrial hearing.
The hearing was held to consider motions by the state and the defense regarding what testimony jurors will be allowed to hear when the case goes to trial Sept. 18 in Sebastian County Circuit Court. Bobo, 38, is accused of having sex with a male student younger than 18 last year.
After hearing testimony from 20 witnesses called by the state, Judge Norman Wilkinson said the testimony of at least 11 of the witnesses was inadmissible. He said he would issue a written ruling later specifying what testimony he considered admissible.
One of the witnesses refused to answer questions, invoking his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself. Chief Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Dan Shue told the judge he could not think of any way the witness could incriminate himself.
Wilkinson allowed the witness to step down and said he would take up that issue at a later hearing. He set a tentative date of Aug. 21 for the hearing.
Five of the witnesses who did testify at the hearing said they had sex or sexual contact with Bobo while they were minors.
Steve Gentry said he met Bobo when she was a substitute teacher in his class at Western Grove school in Newton County, and they began a relationship while he was 17. He said he moved in with Bobo after graduating in 1991, and they married in 1992. The couple later divorced.
Another witness said he had sex with Bobo while he was a student at Western Grove in the early 1990s. Three others said they had sex or sexual contact with Bobo while they were students at Wells Junior High School in Greenwood, where Bobo taught from 2000 to 2005.
Shue argued that those witnesses’ testimony was admissible under the Arkansas’ “pedophile exception,” which allows evidence of other acts to be admitted in a case of alleged sexual abuse against a child if the evidence shows a proclivity toward similar acts against the same person or class of people.
Defense attorney Dan Stewart argued that the risk of the testimony confusing or prejudicing a jury outweighed its probative value, and that the testimony of two of the witnesses was not relevant because it concerned acts that allegedly occurred as much as 15 years ago.
Wilkinson said he would not admit testimony about acts that allegedly occurred when Bobo was teaching in Newton County, but he was inclined to admit testimony about the other alleged sexual acts.
Eight witnesses testified that they witnessed unusual behavior by Bobo while they were her students or were attending the school where she taught.
One witness said he saw Bobo sitting with her legs apart while wearing a skirt and no underwear.
Defense attorney Shannon Foster sat in a chair facing the 17-year-old witness, moved her legs apart and asked, “Can you tell if I’m wearing underwear or not?”
“No,” the witness said.
Foster asked the boy to describe exactly what he saw under Bobo’s skirt, but he did not answer. Foster stopped her cross-examination when the boy appeared to be starting to cry.
Another witness said he walked into a classroom and saw two male students touching Bobo in the “breast area.”
Foster said the witness previously told police he saw Bobo touching the boys. “Which is it?” she asked.
“All I am saying is, there was a lot of action going on,” the witness said.
Witnesses also testified that Bobo invited male students to come to her house while her husband was away; said she would wear “sexy clothes” when the students came to her house; told students she was wearing a thong; sat behind a male student and twirled his hair; and wore low-cut tops to school.
Several witnesses testified that a male student stuck a cardboard tube into the front of his pants as a joke, and Bobo grabbed the tube and said it was not real.
Two witnesses testified that they saw a male student “scooping” Bobo, which was defined as giving her breast an upward flip. The student was not punished, the witnesses said.
Larry Gant, a counselor with the Arkansas Department of Community Correction, and Jackie Hamilton, coordinator for the Sebastian-Crawford Multidisciplinary Team on Child Sexual Abuse, testified that Bobo appeared to have been “grooming” students to become victims of abuse.
Wells Junior High Principal Kevin Hesslen and teachers Angela Miller and Connie Williams testified about Bobo’s behavior as a teacher. Williams, who co-taught special education students with Bobo, said she heard Bobo tell a male student that green M&Ms “make you horny.”
Wilkinson ruled that testimony about what Gant described as “grooming behavior” would not be admitted. The judge said he would allow testimony from Hesslen, Miller and Williams and would allow testimony about the “scooping” incident, which he said appeared to be an action by a student, not Bobo.
During a closed portion of the hearing, Wilkinson heard testimony the defense wants to introduce about the sexual history of the alleged victim in the case. The judge did not rule on that issue Tuesday.
Shue asked Wilkinson to exclude any testimony about Bobo’s character that does not concern traits pertinent to the case. Wilkinson said he would take up that issue at the Aug. 21 hearing.
A motion by the defense to exclude e-mail evidence also is expected to be considered at that hearing." (John Lyon/SWTimes.com 8/2/06)
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Sumner County Teacher's Aide Charged With Sex With Student
Posted
By:
Heidi
on 8/8/2006 8:35:04 AM
"A Conway Springs High School teacher's assistant has been charged with unlawful sexual relations involving a 17-year-old student and with furnishing alcohol to minors, the Sumner County prosecutor said Tuesday.
The charges accuse Amy D. Pierce, 30, of Conway Springs, of unlawful sexual relations, a felony, Sumner County Attorney Shawn DeJarnett said.
There is no indication the activity outlined in the charge occurred on school grounds, but the 17-year-old is a male student at the high school, DeJarnett said. Unlawful sexual relations is a lower-level felony essentially defined as a situation where a person abuses his or her authority. The sexual relations occurred this past spring semester, he said.
According to DeJarnett, Pierce also is charged with furnishing alcoholic beverages to a minor for illicit purposes, a felony. And she is charged with three misdemeanors: unlawfully hosting minors consuming alcohol or cereal malt beverages and two counts of furnishing a cereal malt beverage to a minor.
The charges, filed Monday, allege that some of the crimes occurred during a party at Pierce's house, he said.
Pierce, who has been ordered to appear in court Aug. 31, couldn't be reached for comment.
No one else has been arrested.
Conway Springs school superintendent Clay Murphy said Pierce has been a teacher's assistant contracted through a special-education agency -- Sedgwick County Area Educational Services Interlocal Cooperative No. 618.
She has been a special-education paraeducator at Conway Springs High since August 2004, said Larry Clark, director of special education with the cooperative. He said he couldn't comment on her current job status." (Tim Potter/Kansas.com 8/1/06)
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Former Teacher Accused Of Sexually Assaulting Students
Posted
By:
UFO
on 8/5/2006 12:52:36 AM
"A former teacher was charged with sexually assaulting students, KPRC Local 2 reported Wednesday.
The Montgomery County Sheriff's Office said Lisa Minchew, 28, sexually assaulted students ranging in age from 14 to 16 years old.
Minchew was an art teacher at Magnolia High School when she was suspended with pay for allegedly bringing alcohol to a student party and allegedly getting too close to some of her students.
"Some of the people there complained that a teacher from the school district was having sex with one or several of the children," said Lt. Joel Sclider with the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office.
The district terminated her on March 26.
After a six-month investigation by the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office, Minchew was charged and arrested at her Conroe home.
Investigators said many of the details did not come to light until Minchew showed up at another teenage party last month where she once again brought alcohol.
"Some children (who) had been there, had been involved in an accident after they had been drinking," Sclider said.
Officials said the students were in her car when they crashed after driving drunk. That's when they said the students began to provide more information and evidence about the alleged sexual assaults.
Minchew was charged with three counts of sexual assault of a child
The Magnolia ISD superintendent declined an interview, but issued a statement.
"We've taken the appropriate action. She's no longer a teacher in this district," superintendent Michael Holland said.
Investigators said more action might be taken against Minchew.
"We believe there may be more students out there that have not come forward," Sclider said." (Click2Houston.com 8/2/06)
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Florida Teacher Convicted Of Having Sex With Student
Posted
By:
Prince
on 7/25/2006 12:16:18 AM
"(AP) — A 25-year-old former Escambia County teacher was convicted of having sex with an underage student at a private school where she taught before working at the public Escambia High School.
Janelle Marie Bird was found guilty yesterday of two counts of unlawful sexual activity with a minor and two lesser counts of unnatural and lascivious act.
She was charged in December for having a two-year affair with a student from East Hill Christian School. The boy was 15 when the affair began.
Bird admitted the affair and testified Thursday that she loved the teen.
Bird faces up to 30 years in prison. She has been fired." (TampaBays10.com 7/22/06)
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Ex-Teacher Given Jail Time
Posted
By:
Editor
on 7/19/2006 9:55:07 AM
Robin Winkis apologized for 'horrible' decision to have sex with students.
"A former high school English teacher who "betrayed a position of trust" was sentenced to 2 to 23 months in York County Prison for having sexual relations with two male students.
Robin Lynn Winkis, who taught and coached at Central York High School for five years, was immediately taken into custody Monday.
York County Judge Stephen Linebaugh rejected Winkis' request for probation, saying she betrayed the school, parents, her students, the community and "every person who entered the teaching profession."
"You crossed a border that one may not cross. There may be no excuse or rationale," Linebaugh said.
"When you betray the level of trust you did, there is no justification for the court to show mercy."
Winkis, 30, was charged in December for allegedly having sex with a 16-year-old student and later a 17-year old student in her car, her city apartment and a hotel room.
She later pleaded guilty to corruption of minors and unlawful contact with minors and no contest to sexual assault.
Winkis apologized to the victims, their parents, fellow teachers and the community.
"What I did was wrong. I am sorry. I used poor judgement. I made horrible decisions," she said.
Before sentencing, Winkis' attorney Terrance McGowan presented 12 character letters from supporters and detailed Winkis' troubled history, which included depression and a physically-abusive relationship with a former boyfriend. Winkis allowed the friendships with students to evolve into sex at a time when she was alone, naive, dependent and easily manipulated, he said.
"We are not offering an excuse. She is the adult here. She should have stopped it," McGowan said.
Linebaugh also ordered Winkis to continue with counseling, 100 hours of community service, pay all court costs and related fees and have no contact with the victims or victims' families. She must register as a sexual offender with the Pennsylvania State Police under Megan's Law.
McGowan said Winkis had already been punished with being disgraced by the publicity and can never teach again, something she loved.
After sentencing, McGowan said he was "disappointed but not surprised." He said that a victim's father wrote in his victim's impact statement that a male teacher would go to jail if he had sex with female students and he wanted the judge to send a consistent message.
"I think the court was in a tough position with the double-standard argument," McGowan said.
Prosecutor David Cook said Winkis was not a victim but a well-educated person who made "thoughtful and deliberate choice" to abuse her authority, power and trust. He said the relationship was more than one regretful incident but a prolonged relationship with two students.
"She is sorry now. She wasn't sorry then. She was willing to engage a second child," Cook said.
Winkis even discussed plans to marry one of the victims, Cook said.
"She was a 29-year-old with a master's degree. She could have figured out it was not a good idea," Cook said." (Mike Hoover/York Daily Record 7/18/06)
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Sex Shame Teacher Jailed
Posted
By:
Caxy
on 7/3/2006 9:47:10 AM
"A woman teacher who took a teenage pupil's virginity in a school stock cupboard has been jailed for four years and three months after she was seen having sex with him while she was on jury duty.
Elvira Fairhurst, 49, began a four-month affair with the boy shortly before his 15th birthday.
After lavishing attention and praise on the boy, who had behavioural problems, the married mother-of-two allowed him to kiss her.
The kissing quickly moved to French kissing and then heavy petting in the stock cupboard, where they then had sex. They went on to have sex at least seven times - three in the stock cupboard, two in the school's male toilets and two in a park.
Bizarre twist
The affair came to light in a bizarre twist of fate, when Fairhurst was spotted having sex with the boy while she was on jury duty at Liverpool Crown Court.
Fairhurst, who pleaded guilty at the same court to 11 counts of sexual activity with a child, was jailed for four years and three months on each count. The sentences will run concurrently. She was also banned from working with children indefinitely.
Judge Henry Globe QC told Fairhurst, who lives in Liverpool: "You performed sexual acts in semi-public, in a stockroom, in a boys' toilet, in a park and finally at a time when you were performing public service as a juror in this very building, in an open-air car park in full view of a crane driver."
He added: "Dumbfounded, the crane driver called the police. It was that action that brought to an end your disgraceful behaviour." (ManchesterEveningNews.co.uk 6/29/06)
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Germantown Teacher Pleads No Contest To Reduced Charges
Posted
By:
Groner
on 6/21/2006 8:59:16 AM
"In a plea deal struck with the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s office, a Germantown High School teacher accused of kissing two students pleaded no contest to two amended charges of fourth-degree sexual assault in Washington County Circuit Court Monday.
Judge Andy Gonring accepted the pleas of James E. Catalano, 35, found him guilty, then set an Aug. 3 sentencing date.
Catalano originally faced up to 37 years in prison after he was charged with two counts of sexual assault of a student by school staff and one count of child enticement." (Al Dunn/GMToday.com 6/20/06)
Double Standard - what double standard?
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Teacher Arrested For Sexual Assault
Posted
By:
Caxy
on 6/14/2006 7:51:52 AM
"A Malvern High School teacher was arrested Tuesday morning for sexual assault for allegedly having a sexual relationship with a student.
Heather Carter, 30, of Alexander is accused of having the sexual relationship with a 17-year-old female student. Police say they contacted Carter's attorney and she turned herself in Tuesday morning.
Malvern police say Carter was a teacher during the 2005-2006 school year at Malvern High School. According to the affidavit, Malvern Public Schools Superintendent Ron Holt “came to the MPD (Malvern Police Department) to advise of a relationship that was discovered between a Malvern High School teacher and a 17-year-old student who had just graduated this year.” (Monika Rued/TodaySTHV.com 6/13/06)
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Former Clairemont High Teacher Arrested On Chld-Molest Charge
Posted
By:
FlyBoy
on 6/9/2006 11:33:54 AM
"A former Clairemont High School history teacher was arrested at her North Park home Wednesday on suspicion of having a sexual relationship with a student two years ago.
San Diego police took Danielle Marie Walls, 27, into custody about 8:30 a.m. and booked her into county jail on suspicion of child molestation, SDPD Capt. Guy Swanger said.
Walls allegedly had a sexual relationship with the 16-year-old boy between April and December 2004. His family reported the alleged crimes – which reportedly occurred off campus – about two months ago, according to investigators.
It is “not unusual” for sex-crime victims to delay revealing the offenses for months or years, Swanger told reporters during an afternoon briefing outside downtown SDPD headquarters.
The suspect has left the San Diego Unified School District and now works in real estate, the captain said. The alleged victim currently attends classes at another campus." (SignOnSanDiego.com 6/7/06)
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Teacher Who Had Child With Teen Retains Custody
Posted
By:
Editor
on 6/8/2006 8:02:02 AM
"The mother of a 3-year-old girl fathered with a 13-year-old student will retain custody of the child although the father will get visitation.
After two days of testimony, state District Judge Doug Warne ordered Lisa Zuniga Duran, 30, to continue caring for the child as the primary parent although the girl's father, Andrew Gallardo, 17, of Edmond, Okla., will be allowed to see the child.
Gallardo and his mother, Tammy Ambriz, filed suit seeking custody of the child after Duran stipulated their visits with the child be supervised. Since Gallardo and his family had not seen the child in seven months when he wanted to visit, Duran said she and the girl's therapist thought it best to have someone familiar to the girl be present.
Duran was pregnant when she pleaded guilty to aggravated assault of a child in January 2003. She admitted to having a sexual relationship with Gallardo while he was a student and she was a teacher's aide at Victory Academy in Pasadena.
``I know the judge agonized over it but how does a registered sex offender get custody?'' said Butch Bradt, Gallardo's attorney. ``If she (Duran) were a man, he would not get custody.'' (Ruth Rendon/Houston Chronicle 6/7/06)
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Girls' Basketball Coach Accused Of Sex With Boy
Posted
By:
BullsEye
on 6/5/2006 7:44:40 AM
"Pioneer High School girls basketball coach Anne Ichord, 32, was arrested Friday by Woodland Police detectives on probable cause of unlawful sexual intercourse (four counts), oral copulation (two counts) and sexual penetration with a minor (one count).
Police Department officials said she was arrested just hours after police learned of a sexual relationship between her and a male student, who at the time was under the age of 18." (Monica Krauth/DailyDemocrat.com 6/4/06)
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Former Beauty Queen Accused Of Sex With Student
Posted
By:
BullsEye
on 6/5/2006 7:41:00 AM
--Former Miss Texas contestant faces felony charge--
"A first-year Hebron High School teacher and former Miss Texas contestant faces up to 20 years in jail after an 18-year-old student told police he had sex with the 25-year-old woman several times at her apartment in Austin Ranch.
Amy McElhenney, who taught Spanish and was a cross-country coach at the Lewisville ISD school in Carrollton, is charged with having an improper relationship with a student, a second-degree felony. She was arrested on May 25, the last day of school, posted $5,000 bail and was released." (Brandon Formby/The Dallas Morning News/KHOU.com 6/2/06)
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Another Woman Gets No Jail Time
Posted
By:
FlyBoy
on 6/1/2006 8:33:10 AM
--English teacher, 27, had relations numerous times with 16-year-old--
"A Michigan woman is following in the path of other female teachers who rape their students by receiving no jail time.
Kristen Margrif, 27, of Mayville, Mich., was given a one-year delayed sentence on three felony counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct with a student.
Tuscola County Circuit Judge Patrick Joslyn said if Margrif remains trouble-free for a year, prosecutors will reduce the charges to three counts of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct, which are misdemeanors, meaning she'll only have to serve probation.
Margrif is also barred from schools and day-care facilities, will have to register as a sex offender for 25 years, and have no contact with people younger than 17 unless approved by a probation officer." (WorldNetDaily.com 6/1/06)
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Canon City Teacher Charged In Sexual Assault
Posted
By:
FlyBoy
on 5/31/2006 8:12:16 AM
"A female elementary school teacher in Canon City faces charges of sexual assault on a child. Jennie Overstreet, 33, turned herself in Friday afternoon to Canon City Police. She is charged with Sexual Assault on a Child by a Person in a Position of Trust, Pattern of Sexual Abuse, Contributing to the Delinquency of a Minor and Enticement of a child.
According to the arrest warrant a search of Overstreet's home turned up notes written to victims, pornographic material and some drug paraphernalia. Investigators are conducting interviews with more than half a dozen potential victims.
Bond was set at $50,000. Overstreet is a teacher at Lincoln Elementary School in Canon City and has been employed by the district since 2002." (Greg Boyce/KOAA.com 5/26/06)
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Teacher Charged With Raping 2nd Pupil
Posted
By:
FlyBoy
on 5/31/2006 8:10:18 AM
" A female teacher and director at a Montessori school, already charged with the statutory rape and sodomy of a male pupil, has been indicted on similar charges involving a second boy, a prosecutor said Tuesday.
Lina Sinha, 40, began having sex with the second pupil at the exclusive Manhattan school, which encourages pupils to learn and develop their creativity at their own pace, when he was 12, Assistant District Attorney Florence Chapin told the court. Sinha began sex liaisons with the first boy, now a city police officer, when he was 13 and she was 29, the prosecutor said, adding that the liaisons lasted for years." (AP/WNBC.com 5/31/06)
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Former Teacher Fights Law Against Sex With Students
Posted
By:
TBird
on 5/28/2006 12:07:17 PM
"(AP) A former Catholic high school teacher who is accused of having consensual sex with a 16-year-old student is challenging the state law that prohibits that behavior.
Twenty-nine-year-old Matthew Glasser, a former music teacher at Northwest Catholic High School, is charged with second-degree sexual assault under a law that makes having sex with students a crime, even if the student has reached 16, the age of consent in Connecticut.
His attorneys say the law infringes on Glasser's constitutional right to privacy, and are asking that the charges be dismissed.
School officials at Northwest Catholic learned of the affair in early May 2005 after the girl feared she might be pregnant, according to the arrest warrant.
The girl told police she had sex with Glasser at least eight times.
Advocates for sexual assault victims say the law is needed because teachers hold such sway over a student's life that consent to a sexual relationship is not possible.
A hearing on Galsser's motion has not been scheduled." (AP/WTNH.com 5/28/06)
The Slippery Slope
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Teacher Held On Suspicion Of Sex With Pupil
Posted
By:
TBird
on 5/28/2006 12:03:38 PM
"A Cañon City teacher was arrested Friday for allegedly having sex with an elementary school student, the Cañon City Police Department stated.
Jennie Overstreet, 33, was arrested on suspicion of felony sexual assault on a child by a person in a position of trust, contributing to the delinquency of a minor and enticement of a child, according to police.
She is suspected of assaulting a juvenile male; police did not release the boy’s age, the number of alleged instances or where they occurred.
Overstreet turned herself in Friday afternoon at the Fremont County Sheriff’s Office. She is being held on $50,000 bond.
According to police documents, officials searched Overstreet’s home and found pornographic material, drug paraphernalia and notes she allegedly wrote to victims.
A Web site for Lincoln Elementary School in Cañon City states Overstreet teaches sixth grade and graduated from Mid-America Nazarene University, a Christian college in Olathe, Kan.
She has been employed by the school district since the summer of 2002.
Police said Friday the investigation is continuing, and there is a possibility of additional victims and charges.
In Colorado Springs, a number of teachers or high school coaches have faced similar charges in recent years.
In April 2005, 33-year-old Gwen Anne Cardozo, a former Wasson High School English teacher, was charged with a pattern of sexual assault on a child by one in a position of trust for having a sexual relationship with a student, 18-yearold Victor Ivan Gomez.
Cardozo was given a fouryear deferred sentence in September. Her plea agreement required her to register as a sex offender, participate in sex offender treatment and remain under supervision the rest of her life.
Dana Scott Anstey, a longtime Sierra High School coach and social studies teacher, was sentenced in January to seven years of intense supervised probation and was ordered to register as a sex offender for using the Internet to prey on young girls.
He taught at Sierra for 19 years and was arrested after arranging to meet two girls in person, after chatting with them online about having oral sex.
On May 1, former Pine Creek High School chemistry teacher Derrick Adam Davies was sentenced to three years in prison for sexually assaulting a 16-year-old student.
Davies molested the girl in a classroom after agreeing to help her improve her grades and had sex with her when he brought her soup when she was home sick.
Two local coaches who worked for Colorado Springs School District 11 also have been arrested in the past year for sexual acts with minors. One was a contracted worker and the other a volunteer spirit team coach and crossing guard.
Charles Henry Myers, 52, was jailed On Oct. 21 on suspicion of sexual assault on a child by someone in a position of trust, after admitting that he sexually assaulted a female student. He is free on $10,000 bail.
And Marsha Ann Williams, 45, was arrested in November on suspicion of hosting a party for teen girls during which she photographed them simulating sexual acts with party favors shaped like penises.
She was not charged with a crime; the 4th Judicial District Attorney’s Office said she exercised “incredibly bad judgment” but did not break the law." (Bobbi Sankey/Gazette.com 5/27/06)
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Mother Catches Teacher In Bedroom With Two Boys
Posted
By:
TBird
on 5/24/2006 12:14:44 PM
"There's new information in the case of the Virginia high school teacher accused of having sex with two of her special education students.
9News has learned Bonnie Sue Davis was caught inside the home of one of the boys involved in the allegations. They were discovered by the mother of the other teenager. We want to make very clear, no sexual activity was witnessed. There was no drinking nor drugs. Everyone was fully clothed.
Nevertheless, 35-year-old Bonnie Davis was in a darkened bedroom with two of her male students, ages 14 and 15, on a Friday night in February. The mother of the 14-year-old, looking for her son, found him at the 15-year-old's home with their teacher.
That conduct alone is a violation of Spotsylvania County, Virginia school policy. But Davis now faces far more serious allegations: six counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor; two counts of sodomy and one charge of having sex with a 14-year-old. Her attorney says those charges are false.
Police brought the charges last week, more than a month after the parents of one of the boys informed the principal at Courtland High School they had heard one of the boys say the other boy was "going with a teacher."
According to school officials, Principal Michael Bedwell took that to mean the student had a crush on his teacher and did not constitute an allegation of sex. At Courtland, Bedwell interviewed the students and the teacher, all of whom denied any improper behavior.
The parents finally turned to a private investigator, who says he discovered Davis had given the two boys gifts and money. The investigator turned to Spotsylvania County's Commonwealth's Attorney William Neely after he became convinced the allegations were truthful. It was only after Neely became involved one week later that the sheriff's office announced the arrest of Bonnie Sue Davis.
The question is, should sheriff's office have been notified a full month earlier by the principal at Courtland? School officials contend the Principal conducted a proper inquiry into what he perceived as a non-sexual allegation." (Steve Morris/WBIR.com 5/19/06)
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Teacher Resigns After Sex Allegation
Posted
By:
Editor
on 4/24/2006 12:04:00 PM
"TULSA, Okla. A Tulsa Union Public Schools teacher resigns after being accused of having a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old student.
Paige Cramer was scheduled to appear before the school board for a termination hearing next Monday, but a district spokeswoman says she tendered her resignation earlier this week.
Superintendent Cathy Burden called for Cramer's resignation in February, shortly after the 15-year-old boy accused the teacher of carrying on a sexual affair with him for several month.
Broken Arrow police haven't arrested Cramer and say they still are investigating the claims." (AP/KTEN.com 4/24/06)
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McHenry Special Ed. Teacher Accused Of Sex Abuse
Posted
By:
Editor
on 4/24/2006 12:02:02 PM
"(CBS) McHENRY, Ill. A special education teacher at McHenry West High School is facing sexual abuse charges.
Laura Sieradzki, 32, of Palatine, is accused of having sex with a 17-year-old male student at a party off school grounds. She was also accused of piercing two female students’ bodies in an "inappropriate area," McHenry County Sheriff’s Lt. Don Carlson told the Northwest Herald.
Sieradzki was charged with aggravated criminal sexual abuse, criminal sexual assault, two counts of piercing the body of a minor, and three counts of unlawful delivery of alcohol to a minor.
Carlson said an investigation against Sieradzki commenced after an examination of e-mails on school computers. He said the sexual contact with the male student occurred in late March in her car, outside a party in Wonder Lake." (CBSChicago.com 4/22/06)
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Claymont Teacher Charged With Having Sex With 13-Year-Old Student
Posted
By:
Editor
on 4/5/2006 12:35:40 AM
"A 34-year-old teacher from the Brandywine School District has been charged with having a sexual relationship with a 13-year-old student.
Rachel L. Holt, a science teacher at Claymont Elementary School, allegedly had sex with the boy 28 times during one week in March, according to New Castle County police spokesman Cpl. Trinidad Navarro.
Holt, who lives in Paladin Club Apartments in Fox Point, has been charged with 21 counts of first-degree rape, two counts of providing alcohol to a minor and one count of unlawfully dealing with a minor.
She is being held in Baylor Women's Correctional Institution in lieu of $560,450 bail.
Police say the alleged incidents happened March 24 through March 31 at the woman's home and that a 12-year-old classmate observed at least one of the alleged incidents.
Navarro said police do not yet know whether the suspect, who has taught at four area schools, had sexual encounters with other students." (Terri Sanginiti/delewareOnline.com 4/4/06)
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Carter High Teacher Investigated For Sex With Student
Posted
By:
Editor
on 3/26/2006 12:57:17 PM
"RIALTO - A Carter High School honors-chemistry teacher has been placed on paid administrative leave pending an investigation into her relationship with a 17-year-old female student, Rialto Unified School District officials said Friday.
The district is investigating whether 38-year-old Anne Boshoven had an improper sexual relationship with the girl.
Boshoven, who could not be reached for comment, has not been arrested, Rialto police said Friday.
Students said Friday that after a conversation with the girl during school, Boshoven became emotional in the presence of several other students.
"I saw her after third period and she seemed upset," said ninth-grader Kristina "Ariel" Wilson, 14. "Then I heard some girls talking about what happened."
Kristina said she wasn't surprised by news of the relationship.
"It happens everywhere in every state," she said.
Administrators at Carter High declined to comment and referred all questions to the district office.
"There's an investigation but we are in the preliminary stages," district spokeswoman Syeda Jafri said. "To speculate beyond this would be premature. We need all of the facts before we make any judgment calls.
"However, what needs to be known is that the Rialto Unified School District takes allegations like this very seriously."
Placing employees on leave if they are being investigated is standard procedure, Jafri said.
In a biography listed on the Rialto school Web site, Boshoven is described as a highly qualified teacher who has been an educator for 13 years. Boshoven earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry with a minor in English, the Web site stated.
The Web site lists a personal message from Boshoven, in which she said "My pledge is to offer a high quality, rigorous educational experience that is accessible to each of my students."
Bill Hedrick, president of the Rialto Education Association, said Friday he was aware that Boshoven had been placed on leave but would not comment further.
The penalties for an improper relationship with a minor vary, depending on the acts, said Denise Trager-Dvorak, a supervising prosecutor in the San Bernardino County District Attorney's Office whose duties include reviewing cases involving sex crimes against children.
Child molestation charges would not apply in a case if the victim is older than 14, Trager-Dvorak said. But depending on the age of the victim, the accused could face up to three years in state prison or one year in county jail if convicted of having sex with a minor. The crime could be filed as a felony or a misdemeanor, depending on the acts.
Chavonne Marsh, a junior at Carter High, said the teacher should not be allowed to teach or work in a position of authority if she is convicted. It's up to both sides to end the relationship, students said.
"But the principals expect teachers to be responsible," said Chavonne, 17.
Cary Gross, a junior, said he would not be surprised if the teacher and a student were involved. He doesn't see the issue as a widespread problem.
"It doesn't bother me," the 17-year-old said. "But I doubt any teacher comes to school thinking `I'm gonna get at this student or that student.'" (Selicia Kennedy-Ross and George Watson/DailyBulletin.com 3/26/06)
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What's Behind Today's Epidemic
Posted
By:
Caxy
on 3/22/2006 7:27:34 PM
"It was a bizarre and emotional courtroom scene, but one occurring with disturbing frequency these days. A popular middle school teacher, 43-year-old Pamela Diehl-Moore, had tearfully pleaded guilty to having sex with a child – a 13-year-old male student who had just completed 7th grade – and now stood before a Hackensack, N.J., judge awaiting sentencing.
And what would that sentence be? Considering all the intense media coverage of male sexual predators victimizing female children, one might expect a stiff prison term, accompanied by a withering rebuke.
But when New Jersey Superior Court Judge Bruce A. Gaeta opened his mouth, the words that came out did not express criticism of the teacher, nor acknowledge any damage she had done to her victim.
"I really don't see the harm that was done here," the judge proclaimed, "and certainly society doesn't need to be worried. I do not believe she is a sexual predator. It's just something between two people that clicked beyond the teacher-student relationship."
"Clicked"? With a 13-year-old?
"Maybe it was a way for him, once this happened, to satisfy his sexual needs," the judge added. "People mature at different rates." Gee thanks, Judge.
According to court transcripts, Gaeta summed up his shocking judicial leniency this way: "I don't see anything here that shows this young man has been psychologically damaged by her actions. And don't forget, this was mutual consent. Now certainly under the law, he is too young to legally consent, but that's what the law says. Some of the legislators should remember when they were that age. Maybe these ages have to be changed a little bit."
Translation: The 43-year-old teacher didn't really do anything wrong in having sex with a schoolboy, the kid wanted it, statutory rape laws are unrealistic and the age of consent should be lowered.
Oh, the sentence? Five years probation – no jail time.
In yet another recent court case, U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten in Kansas also questioned whether sex with kids was really bad.
"Where is the clear, credible evidence that underage sex is always injurious? If you tell me because it is illegal, I reject that," Marten said, according to the Associated Press.
Although most judges don't publicly sing the praises of statutory rape like these two – indeed, Judge Gaeta later came under the scrutiny of a judicial fitness review board – many regular Americans apparently agree with them. A lot of us just don't seem to think there's much of a problem when female teachers have sex with their male students.
"What is the deal lately with hot female teachers seducing their 13- to 16-year-old students?!" asked one blogger expressing the prevalent "what's-the-problem?" attitude: "I think the woman is getting off on the social taboo factor more than anything else. At least, that's what the expert psychologists say. I just wish I had a teacher stupid enough and bored enough in my grade school to make my pubescent dreams come true. If it wasn't illegal and there were no jilted husbands, it's almost a victimless crime."
And Bob Shoop, a Kansas State University education professor and expert witness in 30 court cases involving sexual abuse in schools, summed it up for the Associated Press this way: "I think our society sort of says to the boy: 'Congratulations, that's great. Everybody fantasizes about having a sexual relationship with an older woman.'"
As for the perpetrators themselves, often they just think they're expressing love.
One of the most famous cases of a teacher-student sexual relationship is that of Mary Kay Letourneau, who, unlike Diehl-Moore, served seven years in prison for the statutory rape – or "child rape" as it is called in Washington – of a 13-year-old boy at the school where she taught. Four months after her 1997 arrest, Letourneau – 34 at the time and married with four children – gave birth to a daughter fathered by the boy, Vili Fualaau. Pleading guilty, she was sentenced to 89 months in prison, but her term was suspended except for six months in jail – and the requirement that she stay away from Vili after her release.
But no sooner was she let out – early, for good behavior – than Letourneau was discovered in a car with Fualaau and re-arrested. Incensed, the judge sent her straight to prison to serve out the rest of her seven-and-a-half year sentence.
While Letourneau was behind bars, however, in March 1998 prison officials discovered that she was pregnant with another child by Fualaau. The next year, she and the boy co-authored a book – released in France, but not the U.S. – titled "Un Seul Crime, L'amour" ("Only One Crime, Love") – for which her attorney reportedly brokered Letourneau a $200,000 advance – and 2000 saw the release of her movie, "All-American Girl: The Mary Kay Letourneau Story." She was also divorced from her husband Steve.
When Letourneau was finally paroled on Aug. 4, 2004, Fualaau, then 21, successfully petitioned the court to lift its no-contact order and the couple was married May 20, 2005 – with high-dollar tabloid TV cameras rolling.
The wedding invitations read: "Please join Mary and Vili for their special day. They hope to make this the best wedding experience for you. A luxurious touring bus will whisk you away to their wedding destination. Food and refreshments will be available for your bus ride. Please respect the need for privacy and know that pictures from the wedding will be available for the guests at a later date."
In other words, leave your cameras at home, because we're cashing in on our controversial wedding by selling exclusive video rights for a lot of money.
The 200 to 300 wedding guests reportedly went through identity checks and metal detectors, and signed secrecy and release-of-privacy statements due to the TV videotaping. The couple's two daughters were the flower girls.
"Entertainment Tonight" and "The Insider" had exclusive rights to the wedding, with Seattle's KING 5 News reporting the couple would earn around $750,000 for their wedding footage.
Today the couple, along with their two daughters, reportedly live off the high six-figure paycheck they received for selling their wedding video and reside in a beachfront home in a Seattle suburb.
'Just being rebellious'
Sensational news stories of school teachers like Letourneau preying on students become a little more understandable when you realize the 1960s' sexual revolution has advanced to the point that sex and school seem to go together these days.
In November, the Washington Post interviewed high school students in and around the nation's capital:
Two students were discovered recently having sex in an Anne Arundel County high school gym. Four students at Col. Zadok Magruder High in Rockville were arrested in June after performing sex acts in the school parking lot. A boy and a girl at Springbrook High in Silver Spring were caught "touching inappropriately" in a school bathroom. Last year, three teenage boys at Mount Hebron High in Howard County were arrested after a student accused them of sexually assaulting her in a school restroom, but charges were dropped after the boys said the sex was consensual and the girl recanted.
"Students would have intercourse on the stairwells, locked classrooms, in the locker rooms," said Ihsan Musawwir, 18, a recent graduate of Dunbar Senior High School in the District. "It was embarrassing for me to walk in on it."
Jessica Miller, 19, who graduated in June from T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, said that for some students there, sex on campus is a popular fantasy – and sometimes a reality – particularly in the auditorium.
"It's so big, it's so dark," Miller said. "There's a lot more places to find privacy – behind the stage and on the catwalk."
But what's the appeal? "Just being rebellious," she said. "Coming back to class and saying, 'Ooh, guess what I just did? I just had sex in the auditorium.' "
Cpl. Michael Rudinski, president of the Maryland Association of School Resource Officers, said teenagers do whatever they think their peers are doing, whether they are or not. "The thing about young people is when they see things in the mass media and they think it's going on, they start doing it."
Worse than Catholic clergy sex scandal?
In today's sexually permissive school environment, just how prevalent is the teacher-student sex problem?
Get ready for a shock. According to a major 2004 study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education – the most in-depth investigation to date – nearly 10 percent of U.S. public school students have been targeted with unwanted sexual attention by school employees.
Titled "Educator Sexual Misconduct: A Synthesis of Existing Literature," the report says the mistreatment of students ranges from sexual comments to rape. In fact, says the study's author Charol Shakeshaft, professor of educational administration at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., the scope of the school-sex problem appears to far exceed the clergy-abuse scandal that has recently rocked the Roman Catholic Church.
Comparing the incidence of sexual misconduct in schools with the Catholic Church scandal, Shakeshaft notes that a recent study by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops concluded 10,667 young people were sexually mistreated by priests between 1950 and 2002.
In contrast, she extrapolates from a national survey conducted for the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation in 2000 that roughly 290,000 students experienced some sort of physical sexual abuse by a public school employee between 1991 and 2000.
The figures suggest "the physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests," said Shakeshaft, according to Education Week.
Indeed, more than 4.5 million students are subject to sexual misconduct by an employee of a school sometime between kindergarten and 12th grade, says the report.
The National Education Association disputes Shakshaft's conclusion, Education Week said, calling it "a misuse of the data to imply that public schools and the Catholic Church have experienced the same level of abuse cases."
"I take great umbrage at that suggestion," said NEA spokeswoman Kathleen Lyons. "That just seems like someone is reaching conclusions based on half the data that's needed."
Shakeshaft acknowledged many factors could alter the analysis, including undercounting of youth abused by priests, but she argued this provides impetus for better research.
"Educator sexual misconduct is woefully understudied," Shakeshaft says in her report. "We have scant data on incidence and even less on descriptions of predators and targets. There are many questions that call for answers."
Grooming
Like all sexual predators, says Shakeshaft, "sexual abusers in schools use various strategies to trap students. They lie to them, isolate them, make them feel complicit, and manipulate them into sexual contact. Often teachers target vulnerable or marginal students who are grateful for the attention."
The report draws a clear distinction between true pedophiles – that is, adults who target pre-pubescent children – and those who criminally seduce pubescent but underage youngsters. "The abusers of children younger than seventh grade have different patterns than those who abuse older children," she says, making a disturbing but familiar point about pedophiles' modus operandi:
The educators who target elementary school children are often professionally accomplished and even celebrated. Particularly compared to their non-abusing counterparts, they hold a disproportionate number of awards. It is common to find that educators who have been sexually abusing children are also the same educators who display on their walls a community “Excellence in Teaching” award or a “Teacher of the Year” certificate. This popularity confounds district officials and community members and prompts them to ignore allegations on the belief that “outstanding teachers” cannot be abusers. Many educators who abuse work at being recognized as good professionals in order to be able to sexually abuse children. For them, being a good educator is the path to children, especially those who abuse elementary and younger middle school students.
In contrast, she notes:
At the late middle and high school level, educator abusers may or may not be outstanding practitioners. At this level, the initial acts are somewhat less premeditated and planned and more often opportunistic, a result of bad judgment or a misplaced sense of privilege.
Shakeshaft gives a chilling description of the various techniques of "grooming" – a practice common to virtually all child molesters. Grooming, she explains, is a process whereby …
an abuser selects a student, gives the student attention and rewards, provides the student with support and understanding, all the while slowly increasing the amount of touch or other sexual behavior. The purpose of grooming is to test the child’s ability to maintain secrecy, to desensitize the child through progressive sexual behaviors, to provide the child with experiences that are valuable and that the child won’t want to lose, to learn information that will discredit the child, and to gain approval from parents.
Grooming allows the abuser to test the student’s silence at each step. It also serves to implicate the student, resulting in children believing that they are responsible for their own abuse because “I never said stop.”
Grooming often takes place in the context of providing a child with extras like additional help learning a musical instrument, advisement on a science project, or opportunities for camping and outdoor activity. These opportunities not only create a special relationship with students, they are also ones for which parents are usually appreciative.
Most sexual molesters work very hard to keep their victims from telling others. This is not as hard for the perpetrator to accomplish as it may seem. For one thing, children who are sexually abused by teachers often don't recognize what is happening as abuse. "In many cases," says the report, "they are told that what is happening is love. Many abusers of children at all ages couch what they are doing to the children as love, both romantic and parental."
Other techniques for keeping children quiet, says Shakeshaft, are "intimidation and threats (if you tell, I’ll fail you)," "exploiting the power structure (if you tell, no one will believe you)" and "manipulating the child’s affections (if you tell, I’ll get in trouble; if you tell, I won’t be able to be your friend anymore)." Since kids typically get something out of the relationship – everything from attention and gifts to physical pleasure and a feeling of belonging – they can easily be made to feel responsible, something offenders use to their advantage.
But what happens when, despite the powerful manipulation of their minds and feelings by the sexual predator, children actually do go to authorities?
In many cases, says the federally funded report, they are just not believed: "Because of the power differential, the reputation difference between the educator and the child, or the mindset that children are untruthful, many reports by children are ignored or given minimal attention."
Several studies estimate that only about 6 percent of all children report sexual abuse by an adult to someone who can do something about it. Indeed, fear of not being believed is the No. 1 reason kids don't report their sexual victimization at the hands of adults.
Shakeshaft cites the case of one teacher, Kenneth DeLuca, who was convicted of sexually abusing 13 students between the ages of 10 and 18 over a period of 21 years. Although nearly all of the students reported the abuse at the time it was occurring, school officials ignored the accusations. "Overwhelmingly, the girls experienced a disastrous response when they told about DeLuca’s behavior," said the report. "Many were disbelieved, some were told to leave schools, parents were allegedly threatened with lawsuits."
Even more shocking, Shakeshaft's report documents that offending teachers have frequently gotten off virtually scot-free even when their sexual misdeed are exposed to school administrators.
In one study of 225 cases of teacher sex abuse in New York, although all the accused had admitted to sexually abusing a student, not one was reported to the police and only 1 percent lost their license to teach.
A 2003 study reports that 159 Washington state coaches were "reprimanded, warned, or let go in the past decade because of sexual misconduct" – and yet, "at least 98 of them continued coaching or teaching afterward.”
A 2004 study reports that many school districts make confidential agreements with abusers, essentially trading a positive recommendation for a resignation. In one case, a Seattle educator named Luke Markishtum "had two decades of complaints of sex with students and providing alcohol and marijuana to students prior to his arrest for smuggling six tons of marijuana into the state. The district paid Markishtum the remainder of his salary that year, agreed to keep the record secret, and gave him an additional $69,000."
'Lucky day'
Recently, there has been a seeming explosion in a special type of teacher sexual abuse – female teachers having sex with underage teenage boys, who as a rule are willing participants in the sex.
"Generally the male doesn't feel victimized," said Steven B. Blum, a consulting psychologist to a sex offender program in Nebraska. "A lot of teenage boys would see that as their lucky day," he told the Los Angeles Times.
Lucky day? What about the next day, and the next year and beyond? Experts say sexually victimized boys experience later difficulty in developing age-appropriate relationships and gravitate toward pornography and one-night stands. They are also more likely as adults to suffer depression, anxiety and drug addiction.
The 16-year-old victim of Margaret De Barraicua, a 30-year-old California teacher who pleaded guilty to four counts of statutory rape, did not consider it his "lucky day."
"I'm not the same boy," the boy said in a letter read in court in Sacramento. "At school I became the center of attention. Everyone knew my name." But the boy was so traumatized, his mother wrote in a letter read in court, that "his hair is falling out."
And the father of a Colorado boy molested by Silvia Johnson – who held drug-alcohol-and-sex parties at her home with teenaged schoolboys to be "cool" – told the court the 40-year-old woman "took away my best friend, my hunting buddy. I can't have him back now. He is gone."
Many theories and factors are advanced to explain the major upsurge in illegal teacher-student sexual relationships, including:
Two-breadwinner families mean children have more unsupervised time to be preyed upon.
Cell-phone technology, text messaging and e-mail afford opportunities for teachers and students to communicate privately that didn't exist a generation ago.
The explosion of hardcore pornography, especially online, has resulted in the exposure of children to graphic sexual images to a far greater degree than at any time in history.
But overshadowing virtually all explanations for adult-child sex is the simple fact that the perpetrators – and in the case of female offenders having sex with underage boys, the victims as well – often don't think there is anything wrong with what they are doing.
Essentially, the rationale is: Consensual sex doesn't kill, injure or rob anyone, so where's the victim? Why is "love" (remember Letourneau's book, "Only One Crime, Love") even a crime at all?
How did we get to the point that so many of us – including even some of our judges – just don't see anything wrong with adults having "consensual" sex with children?
To truly answer that question, we're going to have to venture beyond the boundaries of conventional journalism – beyond the presentation of facts, examples, studies, statistics, theories and comments from experts. Journalism can do an excellent job of describing the symptoms of this problem – but can never arrive at its cause, or cure.
Are you ready for a ride into new territory?
Awakening
"You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body." – C.S. Lewis
In "Prince Caspian," C.S. Lewis's second "Narnia" book (currently being made into a feature film following the roaring success of "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe," set for release in December 2007), the story unfolds in a latter-day, secular time, much like our own today.
In that story's "modern" era, most, though definitely not all, of the people had forgotten about the magic, miracles and mirth that were everpresent during Narnia's golden age, forgotten about the existence of the talking animals, indeed forgotten about Aslan the king himself.
The contemporary elite came to regard the beliefs and loyalties that once had been the very heartbeat of Narnian existence as nothing more than pernicious fables clung to by their ignorant, superstitious ancestors. Even the mention of the sacred things of the past was now forbidden by the murderous usurper, King Miraz, since merely speaking of such powerful truths posed a grave threat to his rule.
That is America today. In what was once the finest and most robust expression of Western Judeo-Christian civilization and the core values underlying it, most of us, too, have forgotten.
Forgotten the founding spiritual and moral values of our nation and culture.
Forgotten the simple, intuitive understanding of right and wrong that we grasped effortlessly when we were innocent children, but which we were later intimidated or seduced into doubting – and abandoning.
Forgotten the core truth about man's condition – that he is in reality a "fallen" being, "born in sin," and that his sexual urges must be channeled into marriage.
Freeze. Notice how, for many readers, that last sentence made you wince, if not recoil in horror. "Fallen being"? "Born in sin"? Man, where's this guy coming from? Does he really believe that ancient religious mumbo jumbo?
That, my friends, is exactly the "forgetfulness" of self-evident "truth we all once knew" that I'm talking about.
This basic truth that human beings are fallen and corruptible – a reality not only spelled out in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, but also clearly evident from observing everyday life – this truth about man's condition which is at the very core of our legal system and the very reason for limited government ("Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely") – is now embarrassing to us.
For most people alive today, this Christian worldview, which animated Christopher Columbus, the Pilgrims and the founding fathers in the profoundest possible way, is just a fairy tale, an embarrassing anachronism, perhaps even "the source of most of humankind's strife and war."
We're living in latter-day Narnia, where we mock and deny the "old truths" that, unknown to us, still form the very substance of everything valuable we possess today.
Very simply, we've forgotten what we as human beings actually are, and why we have been put here on this beautiful blue globe we call earth. We've forgotten that we're here to serve a much higher purpose than just fulfilling our own desires.
We've become like Martians who, arriving on Earth for the first time encounter a Ford Mustang convertible. Not having any idea what it is or its maker's intended use, the Martians mistakenly conclude it must be a hot tub and proceed to fill it with water and bathe in it. And then – when you come along and tell them they're ruining this valuable car by their misuse of it, they become angry and accuse you of attempting to deny them their rightful pleasure.
What does this have to do with sex? Without the understanding of our spiritual origin and destiny – of who we are and what purpose our maker intended for us – we can't possibly understand sex and its intended role in our lives. Instead, all we have driving us are the desires, physical and emotional "needs," cravings and compulsions we find welling up from within us.
Sometimes these desires are normal, the kind of sexual attraction to the opposite gender God ordained, leading to bonding and marriage and children. But for some of us, our sexual cravings are rooted in trauma – that is, generated from our emotional reactions to the cruelty, confusion and seduction we've experienced along the path of life. Remember, pain causes us to seek the relief of pleasure.
For example, let's take Mary Kay Letourneau's sexual attraction to a 13-year-old boy. What could have caused it?
Do you suppose it could it have anything to do with the fact that her husband Steve was a serial cheater? Or that her father, ultraconservative U.S. Congressman John Schmitz, was exposed for having a secret affair with a former student? Do you think a young girl's deep resentment over both a hypocritical and cheating father, and later on, over an angry, cheating, betraying husband, could possibly give rise to a forbidden attraction? An attraction based not only on sex, but also on her being worshiped and idolized by a young, relatively innocent, non-threatening male (after years of betrayal by "adult" males). No doubt all this was intoxicating to Mary Kay. Intoxicating and toxic.
In a world with a little more understanding and real love in it, a person like Mary Kay could perhaps be helped. But in our secular, mechanistic world, there is precious little real understanding of what makes people "tick" and thus not much help for troubled people like this.
Yet, an even more important factor in this sexual-predator epidemic is the fact that "right" and "wrong" just aren't real to most of us any more. Even if Letourneau was attracted sexually to a child, for whatever reasons, it's still wrong to have sex with a 13-year-old. And knowing something is wrong is enough reason not to do it – even if part of us wants to.
After all, most people have strong drives and urges. Even normal, red-blooded men, loyal to their wives and children, have powerful sexual drives that, if followed down the rabbit hole without regard to right and wrong, could easily turn them into adulterers.
The problem is, having turned our backs on Judeo-Christian morality and the inner conscience that testifies to it, many of us rely on emotional feelings alone to guide our way through life.
So, if childhood problems cause us to grow up feeling uncomfortable as a man (or a woman), instead of looking within for understanding and healing, we undergo barbaric sex-change operations and "hormone therapy" and pretend we're the opposite gender for the rest of our lives.
If we feel badly about having an unintended child growing inside us, instead of looking for a moral and life-affirming solution, we kill the child.
If we feel sexually attracted to the same gender, we convince ourselves this uprush of inner feeling – rooted in something-gone-wrong in our formative years – is actually genetic, or God-ordained, or the expression of who we "really" are. And then we spend our lives trying to satisfy these inner cravings in the vain hope of finding completion and ultimate happiness.
Of course, choosing what's moral, principled and self-sacrificial over our selfish or unreasonable feelings – that is, preferring something noble and higher over something ignoble and lower – implies there is a God, the source of the higher, as well as evil, the source of the lower.
But according to today's secular, de facto atheistic worldview, there is no good or evil, no heaven or hell. Rather, we're all regarded as just highly evolved animals. But if that's true, there is just no logical reason adults shouldn't be able to have sex with children or whatever else they please.
To illustrate the difference between humans and animals, let me mention that my children raise goats as a hobby. They have a male goat to breed with the various females. Although the buck is just a few months old, it readily mates with the various females – old, young, big, small, it doesn’t matter. They come into heat, and he does his job. Everything's as it should be.
Now, if that is all humans are – animals – then we too should all be able to walk around having sex with anyone we want, just like goats. In fact, why can't we go around naked – like goats? Can you imagine what would happen if we all went to work, school and supermarket stark naked?
Some people, wrongly believing mankind's universal embarrassment over their private parts (yes, "universal" – even in darkest Africa the natives wear loin-cloths) represents an unhealthy shame toward their own bodies, embrace nudity as a philosophy and lifestyle. But they have misinterpreted the embarrassment and abandoned a core truth, namely: The fact that humans have embarrassment over sex and need to keep themselves covered all the time is not some repressive Victorian hang-up over sex. Rather, it is evidence – a very important and powerful clue, and one we better interpret correctly – that our sexual nature somehow is tied in with our – gasp! – fallen "animal" nature.
You see, the truth is, we're not just animals, like goats. We have two natures – an animal nature that eats and procreates, and a spiritual, eternal soul that survives this life.
If we were only animals, then this article would be over and all the concerns expressed earlier about sexual predators would be wrongheaded, the prosecutions unjust, the incarcerations cruel, the stigma undeserved. If we are only animals, there is simply nothing at all wrong with 43-year-old teachers having sex with their 13-year-old students, as long as it is "consensual."
Moreover, if we are just animals, then all consensual sexual activity – any place, any time, any type – is fine, just like with my children's goats.
In that case, of course, when we die we just get buried in the ground and that's the end of us. No afterlife, no soul or consciousness surviving the dissolution of our bodies, no ultimate standard of right and wrong, and no ultimate accountability before the Creator for the way we’ve lived our lives. Just a nice meal for worms.
Is that what you believe? Many people do. That’s what ex-Beatle John Lennon was preaching in his New Age anthem: "Imagine there's no heaven, It's easy if you try, No hell below us, Above us only sky."
For many, this all-consuming obsession with denying God, Judeo-Christian values and our own immortal souls centers around one thing only. Do you know what it is? Do you know what most of the hostility we see toward Christianity in today's culture is actually based on? It's not because following Jesus Christ means we must love one another, feed the poor or comfort the sick. After all, no one is threatened by those things. Rather, at the root of so much loathing toward Christianity and the Bible is what they have to say about sex.
The Old Testament book of Leviticus, for instance, is full of detailed laws and prohibitions regarding sexuality and sexual behavior. Why is this so? What on earth did sexual behavior have to do with God setting the House of Israel apart from the rest of the pagan world so it could be worthy of His special blessing and destiny?
"Why can't we all just be nice to each other," you might wonder, "and have as much sex as we want, with whomever we want, whenever and however we want, as long as it's consensual? And why can’t we call that good, righteous and loving?"
Very simply, how do we know sex outside of marriage – whether it be adultery or premarital sex or homosexuality or teachers seducing kids – is wrong, a sin before God and an offense to our fellow human beings?
For one thing, God has provided some major clues for us, the obvious implications of which we somehow manage to ignore – just like the elephant in the parlor.
For some, the most persuasive clues are in the Bible. Both the Old Testament and the New Testament are unequivocal and total in their condemnation of homosexual sex, of fornication (a term rarely used any more), of adultery. Jesus raises the bar the highest when He says: "Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart (Matthew 5:27-28 KJV)."
But the Bible is not the only clue. As I tell my kids, biblical truths are reflected in everyday life. So, stealing and murder and lying aren’t wrong just because the Bible says so. Rather, the Bible says stealing and murder and lying are wrong because they are wrong. They were always wrong – and the Bible testifies to that timeless Truth that predates the Bible itself. (Remember, in Abraham, Isaac and Jacob's time there was no Bible.)
Thus, the wrongness of sexual immorality should also be as self-evident as the wrongness of stealing or murder.
What? You say you can see that stealing, lying and murder are wrong because they result in victims, but you can't see that premarital or homosexual sex is wrong because you can't see the victim?
Let's look at a few more clues.
Here's a stunningly obvious one: Sex has the potential to produce offspring. And since the evidence is irrefutable that children need both a father and a mother, as well as a stable, long-term, loving home life, this one clue alone leads inexorably to the conclusion that sex is meant only for a committed heterosexual marriage.
Another clue: A ghoulish smorgasbord of sexually transmitted diseases – many incurable, like AIDS, herpes and human papilloma virus (thought to be one of the main causes of cervical cancer), as well as hepatitis, syphilis, Chlamydia, gonorrhea and a host of others – is a pretty darn good indicator that we weren't meant to have wanton, rampant sex.
Still another clue: Millions of dead babies – over a million a year just in the U.S. Recent news reports document that in Zimbabwe dead babies clog up the sewers in the capital of Harare, so many are flushed down toilets and dumped in drains. Getting pregnant when we don't want children tempts us to kill our offspring.
Let's stop for a minute and ask: Just how obvious do clues need to be before we figure out the message? Horrible plagues and millions of unwanted babies seem like pretty good indicators that God didn't intend for us to use our bodies the way many of us do. And yet, in our cleverness we find ways to circumvent these divine roadblocks by way of artificial birth control, abortion, alternative sexual acts and so on. But we're still just making an absurd end-run around God and His obvious restrictions on sex.
Another way we know extramarital sex is wrong is simply because it's pure selfishness and self-gratification. In marriage, there is commitment, sacrifice, self-control, personal growth, mutual respect. In non-married sex there is nothing but use – using the other person in an attempt to fulfill ourselves. Without commitment, there cannot be love. Sorry, the truth hurts.
The Bible admonishes us mortals to choose sides, between life and death, between good and evil. Most often, that choice takes the form of choosing to side with our higher nature against our own lower nature. Satanism and other worldviews based on deception and seduction have always taught the opposite: Side with your lower nature against your higher nature, a conflict Satanists (and yes, they exist) blame on a vengeful, capricious and cruel God ("Why did he create us with all these powerful urges and drives, only to forbid their expression?")
In our culture today – like latter-day Narnia – the prevailing mindset is, increasingly, to mock and demonize those who rebuke our growing infatuation with our lower nature.
At the center of this struggle is sex – one of the greatest mysteries of life. If we never understand sex, we never understand life. For many of us, unfortunately, our understanding has been hijacked by the 1960s cultural and sexual revolution, which was based on lies.
Yes, lies. The sexual revolution glorified the destruction of Judeo-Christian civilization and the morality at its core. Like all revolutions, it seemed sweet at the time. Do you remember?
It seemed so promising, so genuine, so liberating. Boomers will remember 1967's "Summer of Love" in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district. A hundred thousand young "flower people" flocked to the West Coast mecca of the hippie revolution. Scott McKenzie sang, "If you're going to San Francisco, Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair. If you're going to San Francisco, You're gonna meet some gentle people there." Free love and expanded consciousness (with the help of marijuana and LSD) would save our nation from the ravages of war and the greedy materialism that led to conflict. It was beautiful, otherworldly – or so it seemed.
But somehow, just a few short years later, the flowers had faded and Haight-Ashbury was transformed into a scene of crazed, meth-addicted hippies with human degradation and venereal disease and crime everywhere. Already, the toxicity of the '60s revolution was becoming apparent. Today, that cancer has metastasized throughout our culture to the point that children have sex in the school auditorium.
Funny thing about lie-based revolutions. They all turn out bad. Communist revolutions promise freedom and equality, but deliver despotism and misery and death. In the exact same way, the sexual liberation movement, which offered freedom, equality, self-fulfillment and pleasure, has just about destroyed America.
So, where do we go from here? Quo vadis?
If we just go along with whatever compulsions and drives we see rising up in us, and wallow in them, and justify them, and condemn anybody who says otherwise, we're living as animals, not humans.
And believe me, that's not truly living. Unless, of course, you're a goat." (David Kupelian/WorldNetDaily.com 3/22/06)
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Double Standard In LaFave Case?
Posted
By:
TBird
on 3/22/2006 7:16:08 PM
--Punishment Differs for Men and Women Who Have Sex With Teens--
"The decision in the Debra LaFave case raises the question: Is there a double standard when it comes to having sex with teens?
Exhibit One: Debra LaFave. The now notorious 25-year-old middle school teacher from Tampa, Fla., had agreed to plead guilty to two counts of lewd and lascivious battery for having sex with a 14-year-old male student almost two years ago. It was part of a plea deal her lawyers struck with prosecutors so she could avoid serving time in prison.
This morning a judge rejected the deal. This afternoon the prosecutor threw up his hands and dropped all charges.
Exhibit Two: Dang Van Dinh. Earlier this month, the Orlando, Fla., chemistry teacher was sentenced to five years in prison for having sex with a 15-year-old female student.
Comparisons to cases like Van Dinh's seemed on the mind of Tampa Judge Hale R. Stancil this morning when he rejected the plea deal prosecutors had negotiated with LaFave.
"Accepting the proposed plea agreement would undermine the credibility of this court, and the criminal justice system as a whole, and would erode public confidence in our schools," Stancil wrote in an order released today.
The judge may have thought his actions would result in tougher punishment for LaFave. Instead, the case imploded.
Tabloid Fodder
The boy at the center of this case, now 15, has reportedly been overwhelmed by the media frenzy. His mother decided it would be too traumatic for him to testify against his former teacher. That left prosecutors with a much-weakened case and few options.
"The court may be willing to risk the victim's well-being in this case in order to force it to trial; I am not,'' said Chief Assistant State Attorney Ric Ridgway, when he announced that all charges against LaFave had been dropped.
That's why they offered LaFave the plea deal that would have sentenced her to three years of house arrest followed by seven years of probation. She accepted. But now, even that mild rebuke is gone.
It is almost certainly no coincidence that the woman at the center of this highly scrutinized case is an attractive, 25-year-old blonde. Her exploits with the teen have been fodder for shock jocks, tabloids and late-night TV.
Comedian Jay Leno has joked about the case regularly, usually with a punchline like: "Where were these teachers when I was in school?"
As commentators have repeatedly noted, it is hard to imagine a comedian making similar comments if the case involved a male teacher and a young female student.
And LaFave? She is not completely exonerated. Last November she pleaded guilty in the same case in another county to two counts of lewd and lascivious battery in exchange for serving three years of house arrest followed by seven years of probation.
She is clearly relieved that there will be no additional punishment but also publicly contrite. This afternoon she spoke for the first time since her arrest. She says she is "very remorseful." And, she adds, "I only pray the young man and his family will be able to move on with their lives.''
Meanwhile, former teacher Dang van Dinh has begun serving his five-year sentence." (Jeffery Kofman/ABCNews.com 3/22/06)
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Blond, Blue-Eyed, And Free To Go
Posted
By:
BullsEye
on 3/22/2006 12:09:16 AM
--Teacher Debra Lafave Won't Face Student Sex Charges--
"ORLANDO, Fla. -- State prosecutors are dropping the charges against former Tampa teacher Debra Lafave, who was accused of having sex with a 14-year-old middle school student.
The decision came hours after a judge rejected a plea deal that would have meant no prison time for Lafave." (AP/Local6.com 3/21/06)
And did I mention female?
Father of LaFave's boy toy: Debra should have got jail (3/27)
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Teacher's Aide's Trial Postponed Until June
Posted
By:
Editor
on 3/21/2006 5:29:36 PM
"RACINE - The jury trial for the teacher's aide accused of having a sexual relationship with a student has been postponed until June to give the prosecution time to complete DNA testing and interview potential trial witnesses.
Lisa Myhre, 33, has been charged with repeated first-degree sexual assault of a child and sexual assault of a student by an instructor. She pleaded not guilty to the charges; her jury trial was originally set to begin later this month. Assistant District Attorney Robert Repischak requested the adjournment.
DNA samples have been collected from Myhre, her baby, born in late January, and a teenager who is possibly the baby's father.
"If he turns out to be the father it would turn out to be another victim," Repischak said." (Janine Anderson/JournalTimes.com 3/18/06)
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Florida Dismisses Lafave's Charges
Posted
By:
Editor
on 3/21/2006 5:24:49 PM
"In a case followed nationwide, Florida prosecutors dropped charges against former Tampa teacher Debra Lafave, who was accused of having sex with a 14-year-old middle school student.
The boy's mother, along with prosecutors and defense attorneys wanted to avoid public trial for the sake of her son, the Associated Press reported.
The victim has suffered extreme anxiety from the media attention, a psychiatrist previously told Marion County Circuit Judge Hale Stancil.
The decision to drop charges came after the judge rejected a plea deal that would have meant no prison time for Lafave. The judge said the agreement, with no prison time, "shocks the conscience of this court." (WorldNetDaily.com 3/21/06)
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Teacher's Aid Accused Of Sex With Student
Posted
By:
Editor
on 3/17/2006 12:05:33 PM
"A teacher's aid from Hull, Iowa, is accused of having sex with a 15-year-old student.
38-year-old Kelli Cuperus works at the Boyden-Hull Community School and was arrested on felony sexual abuse charges.
The Sioux County Sheriff's Department believes the first incident happened in May of last year, when the boy was still 15 years old. That's where the sexual abuse charges come from, because the boy wasn't old enough to consent.
But Cuperus is charged with different crimes from after the boy turned 16, sexual exploitation by a school employee and lascivious conduct with a minor, for as many as 20 sex acts that authorities believe happened during the school year.
Investigators believe sometime during the week of May 23-27, 2005, 38-year-old Kelli Cuperus picked up a 15-year-old boy from the Boyden-Hull high school. They say she drove him to his home in Hull, Iowa and had sex with him in her car while parked in his driveway.
Cuperus worked at the school twice a week as a teacher's aid.
Court papers state the next time it happened was in August at Cuperus's home in Hull.
“These acts of sexual contact include sexual intercourse,” says Sioux County Attorney Melissa O’Rourke.
Most of the alleged incidents happened in either at Cuperus's home or in her vehicle. The Sheriff's Department believes from August of last year to this month, it happened between 15 and 20 times.
“The Sioux County Sheriff's Office was initially contacted by personnel from the Boyden-Hull Community School District,” O’Rourke says.
School administrators wouldn't say who told them about the alleged relationship. But court papers indicate the sexual contact was still going on this month even as the school began its own internal investigation. Administrators p | |
