Category Archives: Bad Teacher
Teacher, 29, ordered to surrender her passport after ‘trying to flee to Mexico with her lover, 15, to start a new life together’
Kathryn Murray, 29, was found with the teenager at his father’s home despite a court order banning any contact. The 29-year-old was ordered to surrender her passport when she appeared before a judge in Houston, Texas on Saturday.
Teacher, 28, ‘had sex with student, 16, in classroom during school hours’
A high school teacher has been arrested for allegedly having sex with a 16-year-old student in her classroom during school hours.
Jennalin Garcia-Calle, a 28-year-old teacher at Plainfield High School, was arrested in Florida on Thursday after she fled New Jersey when she found out the relationship was discovered.
Police found her at the Recovery Institute of South Florida, a drug and psychiatric treatment center that also facilitates healing for sexual compulsivity and depression.
Jennalin Garcia-Calle, a 28-year-old teacher at Plainfield High School, was arrested on Thursday and charged with second-degree sexual assault and fourth-degree child abuse
She was charged with second-degree sexual assault and fourth-degree child abuse.
The student told a family member about the relationship which is said to have started in December. The police were then notified.
Garcia-Calle is being held on $200,000 bail in Florida, awaiting extradition to New Jersey.
She has been placed on administrative suspension and had been teaching math at the school since 2008. She earned a salary of $50,00 last year.
The sex encounters took place in her classroom during school hours, Union County Prosecutor Theodore J Romankow told mycentraljersey.com.
‘What made this particularly…unusual is that they actually had sex in school, in her classroom when classes were in session,’ Romankow said. ‘Evidently they blocked the windows and locked the door.’
Teacher’s aide and mother of two ‘had sex with three students while three others watched and videotaped it in school gym’
A teacher’s aide is alleged to have had sex with three students while others stood by and filmed the sex romp.
Clarice Lee is accused of leading the six students to a deserted school gym where she had sex with a 16-year-old and committed sex acts on two others.
Three other students watched the 22-year-old woman have sex, with one of them even filming the event on his cell phone.
Lee was arrested after police received a tip about the sexual contact at Amphitheater High School in Tucson, Arizona.
School chiefs called the incident ‘shocking and appalling.’
The short video featuring the sex romp was seized by police after they spoke to the teens, whose ages ranged from 16 to 18 years old.
Detective Cindy Mechtel of the Tucson Police Department’s child sexual assault unit said the incident occurred Friday.
Police were told that that during lunch period Lee led the six students to an old gym on campus that is no longer used.
While in the gym, Lee had intercourse with a 16-year-old boy and sexual contact with two 18-year-old students, Mechtel said.
The other three students – one aged 17 and two aged 18 – watched while one of them recorded the incident on a cellphone.
Mechtel said the sex romp took minutes and she did not know if the video was shared with anyone or uploaded to the Internet.
Mechtel said the teacher knew the students from passing them in the hall, but the incident appeared to be spontaneous.
Police said Lee has been employed at Amphitheater High School since last August
‘As far as we know, this is an isolated incident,’ Mechtel said. ‘The incident appeared to be spontaneous.
‘This certainly isn’t a commonplace situation for a school staff member to be involved in inappropriate behavior with so many students,’ Mechtel said.
‘I have never seen this before in my work with the police department.’
Lee was booked into the Pima County jail on four counts of sexual misconduct with a minor.
The case will be presented to the Pima County Attorney’s Office to decide if additional charges will be filed against Lee regarding the other students.
The activity allegedly took place in the presence of the three other students and one of them reportedly filmed the incident on a cell phone
Lee resigned from her position on Tuesday after her arrest. She had been with the school, working as an aide to special education students, since August 2012.
Parents of other students were sent automated telephone message telling them of the situation.
The parents of students who were involved in the incident were contacted directly.
According to Lee’s Facebook page, which appears to have been last updated in 2010, she is a mother of two who had attended Pima Community College and has previously worked as a special-education teaching assistant at another Tucson school.
LA teacher suspected of sex abuse of 20 kids
An elementary school teacher who worked for nearly four decades in the Los Angeles Unified School District was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of sexually abusing 20 students and one adult, police said.
After a 10-month investigation, eight felony counts of continual sexual abuse and seven counts of lewd acts upon a child have been filed against Robert Pimentel of Newport Beach for abuse that took place at George De La Torre Jr. Elementary in the Wilmington area, Officer Christopher No told The Associated Press.
In addition to the 15 felonies, misdemeanor charges are expected for the remaining incidents, No said.
His bail has been set at $12 million, and an arraignment date hasn’t been set.
Pimentel, 57, left his fourth-grade teaching position last March when allegations arose from several girls who told their parents he inappropriately touched them during school and police opened an investigation.
District officials immediately removed him from campus and parents and state credentialing authorities were informed, school district spokesman Daryl Strickland said. Parents and guardians will be told of the arrest by letter and phone, he said.
Before the official dismissal process with the Board of Education could begin, Pimentel, who had worked for the district since 1974, retired.
“Can you go back and fire someone who’s already retired? No, you can’t,” LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy told the Los Angeles Times.
Deasy said the school’s principal was also immediately removed because the superintendent was “dissatisfied” with how the incident was handled.
Court records obtained by the Times show the allegations covered a period between Sept. 2011 to March 2012.
LAPD Capt. Fabian Lizzaraga told the newspaper Pimentel is suspected of inappropriately touching the children over and under their clothing.
The Police Department said the teacher’s name was spelled “Pimental,” but the school district and public records give the spelling as “Pimentel.”
Police did not know if he had hired an attorney. A woman who picked up the phone at a number listed for Pimentel hung up when asked about a lawyer or comment from family.
There have been several high-profile recent cases of Los Angeles teachers accused of sexually abusing students. More than 225 parents and students are involved in various claims for damages against the district after Miramonte Elementary School teacher Mark Berndt was arrested a year ago and has pleaded not guilty to 23 counts of lewd conduct.
In December, a jury ordered the district to pay a boy molested by an elementary school teacher $6.9 million — among the largest awards in the history of the school system.
The jury found the district liable for the repeated molestation of the 10-year-old student in 2008 and 2009 by teacher Forrest Stobbe at Queen Anne Elementary School in the city’s mid-Wilshire district.
Special ed teacher arrested for heroin at elementary school
Police arrested a Chesterfield County Public Schools special education teacher after they say she was found with heroin at Swift Creek Elementary.
Jessica L. Young, 35, was arrested on Monday at the school and charged with possession of controlled paraphernalia and possession of a controlled substance classified on school property.
“These are very serious charges and the employee was immediately removed from school property,” wrote Chesterfield Schools Spokesman Shawn Smith in a statement. ”The employee has not been working for the school division pending the disposition of the charges and the administrative process.”
Young was a special education teacher at the school, according to Chesterfield Police.
She is set to appear in Chesterfield County General District Court on March 13, 2013, at 1 p.m.
Teacher sues for discrimination after being unjustly fired due to disability …… a fear of children
A longtime French and Spanish high school teacher is suing the Mariemont school district, alleging it discriminated against her because she has a disability – she has a phobia of young children.
Maria C. Waltherr-Willard, 61, of Greenhills says the district in which she worked for 35 years discriminated against her when it reassigned her in 2010 from its high school to its junior high and then pressured her to resign.
The suit claims the discrimination is based on her age and her disability, a rare phobia called pedophobia, which in this context means an extreme fear or anxiety around young children.
Waltherr-Willard’s lawsuit claims she has suffered from the condition since the 1990s and that Mariemont had made assurances to her and her lawyer that she would not have to teach young children.
Documents filed in the case by her medical doctor, psychiatrists and psychologists note that she experiences stress, anxiety, chest pains, vomiting, nightmares and higher than healthy blood pressure when she’s around young children.
A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed three of the six claims in her lawsuit, claims which alleged Mariemont violated an implied contract to keep her from young students.
District Judge Herman J. Weber said the district lived up to its written contract – with the teachers union – and that Waltherr-Willard would still be employed had she not resigned.
He did not rule on the other main allegations of the suit, giving the district’s attorneys more time to respond to them. If the case goes to trial, it’s scheduled for February 2014, according to court documents.
Waltherr-Willard, a Greenhills village council member since January 2012, declined to comment recently on her lawsuit, referring questions to her attorney, Bradford Weber, who did not return phone calls for comment.
Experts in phobias say that irrational fear or extreme anxiety around children is a rare but recognized anxiety disorder though it’s unclear how many people have been diagnosed with it.
“It’s a tough phobia. You can’t really get away from (children) when you’re outside,” said Dr. Caleb Adler, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience at the University of Cincinnati.
“When you’re a teacher, it may not be an issue with older students.”
The term pedophobia also can refer to a fear of dolls, a distaste for children or, in the case of parents, an obsession with one’s own children.
Adler said he has not treated Waltherr-Willard and has never had a patient with pedophobia, but patients with other specific phobias often are treated with anti-anxiety medications and cognitive behavioral therapy, which focuses on coping mechanisms and changing behaviors and perceptions about the object of fear.
“Phobias are often the butt of jokes,” he said.
“They’re a sitcom staple in ways that are not acceptable for other disorders. … I have a lot of respect for someone who, rather than alter their lives to accommodate a phobia, they initiate treatment.”
By some estimates 4 to 9 percent of people have some specific phobia, studies say, and only 12 to 30 percent of them seek help.
Waltherr-Willard was born in Cuba and traveled to the United States in 1969 at age 18. A naturalized citizen, she was a native Spanish and French speaker who became fluent in English and Italian.
Mariemont hired her in 1976 to work at its high school, teaching Spanish and French classes. In 1997 the district asked her to teach a Spanish enrichment class to 4th through 6th graders, but she and her attorney at the time, Alphonse Gerhardstein, objected to it, claiming medical reasons. The district accommodated her, agreeing to keep her at the high school.
According to her personnel file, Waltherr-Willard scored high marks in all of the written evaluations she received over the years, including the latest in 2010. She had a continuing contract with the school district, which is similar to having tenure, and made about $84,000 a year.
Boys made to clean East Tenn. school rest room with toothbrushes; teacher suspended
A Tennessee teacher has been suspended after school officials said she made about 20 eighth-grade boys use toothbrushes to scrub a rest room where graffiti had appeared.
According to The Knoxville News Sentinel two of the boys were taken to a hospital after other students sprayed them in the face with an industrial-strength solvent being used.
Anderson County Schools officials said Norwood Middle School teacher Darla Williams was placed on three days unpaid leave while an investigation was carried out. A school official said Williams was then put on personal leave.
Parent Jay Huckabey said Williams conducted the punishment at the end of the Nov. 29 school day and took cellphone pictures to taunt the students.
“I’m terribly disturbed,” said Huckabey, who also said he took his son to a doctor the day after the incident because the boy complained his eyes were burning.
Anna M. Hurt, the county school system’s human resources director, said school officials investigated the incident, including interviews with the students involved.
A letter placed in Williams’ personnel file on Dec. 11 by Schools Director Larry M. Foster warned Williams that she could be dismissed “if additional infractions of this nature occur again.”
In his letter, Foster noted previous conduct instances, stating, “the decision to invoke the suspension is due to the egregiousness of this incident and prior violations.”
The letter stated Williams was previously insubordinate to her principal, had a verbal altercation with a parent, and had “inappropriate discussions” with students during instructional time.
Another parent of a boy who was sent to clean the rest room said he has never seen a school with the problems of Norwood Middle.
“What she (Williams) did to the eighth-grade class was unthinkable,” said Jeff Palmer, father of one of the boys punished. “They were humiliated and bullied.”
Williams, 48, is a tenured teacher.
Teacher guilty of sex abuse at it again …. now with another student
A woman who went to prison for having sexual relations with one of her students has vanished.
Convicted sex offender Cara Dickey is on the run and parole officers suspect she has a new victim. The former South Buffalo Charter School teacher, who confessed to having a sexual relationship and suicide pact with a 14-year-old student in 2009, removed her electronic ankle bracelet, and disappeared sometime Wednesday.
Not long ago, parole received information that Dickey is involved with another underage boy. Dickey had been out on parole since February 29, 2012, and living in the Back to Basics Ministries’ halfway house in Buffalo. Until now, she had never violated her parole.
Sheila Mashtaire, who lives nearby, told News 4′s Rachel Kingston she had often seen the woman she knew as “Caris” around the neighborhood.
“She seemed like a pretty nice person. She was quiet, never really bothered anybody. She was very friendly to us, actually,” Mashtaire recalled. “I’d see her on the street, up around the corner at the bus stop; she’d say hi.”
Mashtaire didn’t know “Caris” was Cara Dickey, or that she had been convicted of two counts of rape, for her involvement with her former student.
“That’s not good. Not a good situation. I have a 15-year-old son,” said Mashtaire. “That’s totally wrong.”
Dickey isn’t responding to parole officers’ attempts to contact her. They have a warrant out for her arrest.
Corrections officials won’t say much about the underage boy she is suspected of being involved with now.
Department of Corrections Spokesman Peter Cutler said, “There is an allegation of that, and we are aware of it. I can’t get into a lot of detail about that, other than to say that there has been an allegation, you’re correct. And that’s part of the process that we’re going to try to determine, once we get her back into custody.”
Dickey could go back to prison for violating her parole, if she’s caught. If you have information that can help police find Cara Dickey, call 867-6161. You may be eligible for $1,000 reward.
Woman teacher ‘caught in lay-by with sixth-form boy after ball’
Eppie Sprung-Dawson, 26, who is married to the son of a former solicitor general of Scotland, has been reported to prosecutors after police apparently surprised her with the unnamed boy.
Another pupil called officers after seeing them pull in, it is claimed.
Both Mrs Sprung-Dawson and the boy have taken time off school since the alleged incident on Dec 22, after classes broke up for Christmas.
Education officials refused to confirm whether the teacher had been suspended. But a source at the school said: “Everybody’s talking about this at the school and it’s all over Twitter and Facebook.
“Apparently they were returning from a dance when they decided to pull in at a lay-by. The rumour is that another pupil spotted them and called police.”
The source described Mrs Sprung-Dawson as a popular member of staff who was dedicated to her pupils, adding: “If this turns out to be true, she will most certainly lose her job. This is known as a respectable Roman Catholic school.”
Mrs Sprung Dawson teaches English at St Joseph’s College, a Catholic comprehensive in Dumfries with around 800 pupils. It was set up by the Marist teaching order of monks. She has a number of positive reviews from pupils on the website ratemyteachers.com.
One described her as a “legend”, adding: “She improved my English a lot and taught me good techniques and she made me read more. She tried to make her lessons as fun as possible.” Another said: “Miss Sprung is amazing! She was such a laugh at the panto.”
Her husband, Ranald Dawson, 32, also a teacher, is the son of the late Lord Dawson, a former solicitor general for Scotland and judge in the Scottish Supreme Courts. The couple married in Selkirk in April 2010.
They were not available for comment yesterday, but a source close to the Dawsons said: “As far as I was aware, they had a great marriage. This would be most out of character for Eppie.
“She and Ranald have always been dedicated to their careers and respected by their students.”
Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary confirmed that a 26-year-old woman had been reported to the procurator fiscal, adding: “It would be inappropriate to comment further at this time.” A spokesman for Dumfries and Galloway council confirmed that they were investigating.
Þ A married guitar tutor who “seduced” a girl aged 15 and bombarded her with 23,000 text messages in four months has been jailed for four years, 10 months. Nicholas Sedgley, 43, of Herne Bay, Kent, was found guilty at Canterbury Crown Court of sexual activity with a child.
Teacher accused of giving student topless pictures of herself gets 5 years probation
The Van Buren middle school teacher accused of giving a teenager a topless photo of herself was sentenced to five years of probation Tuesday, the Belleville View reports.
Thirty-seven-year-old Andrea Deanna Brennan, of Ypsilanti, was arrested July while drinking alcohol in a car with a 15-year-old student, the report said. Police found sexually explicit pictures on the teen’s cell phone.
“As part of her plea deal, Brennan reportedly admitted to the judge that she created a picture of a significant portion of her breast and sent it to the teen,” the media report said.
The View also reports Brennan, who was a teacher at North Middle School in the Van Buren Public School District, pleaded guilty to using a computer to commit a crime in exchange for the dismissal of one count of providing sexually explicit material and one count of furnishing a minor with alcohol.
