Bad Love

Rachel Holt, 35, was a science teacher at Claymont Elementary School in Delaware. Last year, she was charged with an astounding 28 counts of first-degree rape, after she allegedly had sex with a 13 year-old boy and student of hers during an "intense weeklong affair" in her apartment.

Geez, I'll say it was intense. At an average of four encounters a day, I think Holt might have set a new Bad Love record. Delaware News Journal reports that she got busted by the boy's father, who overheard a phone conversation between Holt and his son. It seems that the tricky Holt had called the kid's dad's girlfriend, pretending to be his mother, and got permission for him to spend the week with her from March 24-31 (probably the elementary school's spring break.)

One of the boy's 12 year-old friends was also invited to the spring break child-assault party, and she gave them both beer, and in classic cool mom/teacher style, also found time between 28 counts of rape to let the 13 year-old drive her car.

She pleaded guilty to second-degree rape, and was sentenced last week to 10 years in prison. "I hope you can forgive me," she said at the sentencing. "I know what I did was wrong."

Posted by Amy at 11:43 AM | Permalink

Allenna Williams Ward, 23, was a middle school teacher in Clinton, SC. Yesterday she was arrested for criminal sexual contact and lewd behavior with minors.

Looks like Allenna was having sex with five boys ages 14 and 15, and the police suspect there may have been more. She was meeting these boys behind a restaurant, in a park, and in the school where she taught and some of the boys attended, as well as sometimes actually paying for a motel room.

She's married, and according to a blogger who knows her, Allenna and her family are all, you guessed it, "great Christian people". She got busted when school staff found a dirty note that she presumably wrote to one of the students she was involved with.

Posted by Amy at 11:28 AM | Permalink

Rebecca Poole was a drama teacher in Birmingham in the UK. Last fall, a relationship she had with a 15 year-old male student went from "being close and flirty to being inappropriate and unlawful" when they started having sex in her car.

The student apparently filmed one of their encounters with his cellphone, and his parents later saw the movie on his phone and called the cops. Poole denies that they were having a relationship, but explains the actual video footage that exists of her having sex with her underage student by saying that he made her do it: she told the police he was holding a screwdriver to the back of her head. You just can't see it in the movie.

A creative defense on the part of Ms. Poole the drama teacher, but it sounds like blaming the victim to me.

Posted by Amy at 01:54 PM | Permalink

Johnny Cuevas, 37, was a Spanish teacher at Randolph High School in Harlem. In 2005, he went on vacation to the Dominican Republic over spring break, and another teacher at his school saw him there, staying at the same hotel. But Cuevas was apparently vacationing with a special girlfriend--his student, Alenny Mercado, who was 18 at the time.

The teacher who says he saw the teacher and student together says he told their principal about it twice, but the principal brushed him off. When investigators started looking into the allegation, the principal brought Cuevas in for a meeting to get their stories straight over the MLK Day weekend earlier this year, paying him two days' salary for his time.

Cuevas and Alenny Mercado both deny that there was any relationship going on, though Mercado does say she was in the DR over Spring Break 2005 visiting relatives. She's now going to Fordham, and has refused to speak to investigators: "I spoke to someone, asking me questions, but I didn't know what it was about," she said. "The investigator wanted to meet with me, but I said no. He wouldn't tell me what it was about, and I was busy."

She also suggests that the accusing teacher, who is apparently black, was upset about "Latin culture" growing at the school, so attacked a Latino Spanish teacher as some sort of psycho-racial-sexual retaliation.

Cuevas is no longer teaching anyone irregular conjugation, but is doing administrative work during the investigation.

Posted by Amy at 10:02 AM | Permalink

Diane West, 52, was a Bayonne special ed teacher and guidance counselor whose affinity for young teenage boys went on almost entirely unchecked and unremarked upon for over 20 years at Bayonne High. She was accused of statutory rape in 2001, left her job, and finally pleaded guilty to sexual assault in 2005, but got off with just probation after her ex-colleagues and friends helped convince a judge of her good character.

The Times has a good piece on West's career as a teacher and counselor, and on her extra-curricular activities, which include groping a 13 year-old at a school dance in 1980, marrying a suicidal recent Bayonne High graduate in 1985 (when she was 31) who got her pregnant when he was in 11th grade, divorcing him in 1996, and then in 2001 taking up with one of her own son's friends, a 15 year-old whose parents for some reason allowed to move into her house.

What is this lady's problem? Well, for one thing, she says that she had an abusive boyfriend when she was 14, and that she got pregnant and gave her baby up for adoption. I think it's pretty obvious that this early relationship was the start of her fixation on young teenage boys, and it came up in the court's psychological evaluation of her.

And she also uses her difficult teenage experiences as an explanation for her adult behavior. According to the Times, "In talking about the relationships with a court-appointed psychiatrist last year, Ms. West said that when she took up with Steve and Chris, she thought it was acceptable because she had had a child at 14. Later, she said, she realized teenage boys can suffer emotional damage if they become sexually involved with an adult, especially an authority figure like a teacher."

No shit, Sherlock! But apparently her own boss saw her criminal sexual involvement with boys as just a foible, a part of West's personality, and not a dangerous and harmful act. “Diane has a thing for young boys,” said her former principal Daniel Doyle in a court statement.

West herself refused to be interviewed for the article.

Posted by Amy at 12:38 PM | Permalink

Remember when you were in high school and your Social Studies teacher was 23 or 24? And he or she seemed so mature at the time, but now you think "Damn, how can they let people that young teach high school?" Well, young as they were, at least most of those first-year teachers had the sense not to date us.

Unfortunately, former Miss Texas contestant Amy McElhenney didn't get that memo. A first year Spanish teacher and cross-country coach, 25-year old Miss McElhenney figured she was safe dating an 18-year old student. After all, he's legally an adult. Oops! Turns out that she might have beat the statutory rape case, but violated another law regarding improper relationships between teachers and students, no matter the age difference. So far, five Texas teachers have been convicted under the law since it went into effect in September 2003.

But of course, as one Bad Love reader notes, "She's 25? And he's 18? Aw, let her have a little fun."

Fun? Sure. But still bad love? Definitely.

Posted by Emily at 05:28 PM | Permalink

Alan Schaefer, 43, was a middle school music teacher in Long Island. He got busted last summer for some really sleazy chatting about masturbation with an undercover cop pretending to be a 13 year-old girl, and arranging to meet up with her in Manhattan. Now his lawyers are arguing that because he didn't send any dirty pictures to her, he didn't actually break the law.

The law forbids dissemination of material depicting sexual acts to a minor, and lawyers are hoping a judge will agree that "depicting" refers only to photographs. A Westchester lawyer charged with the same thing last year had the charges against him thrown out by a Manhattan judge, but he got convicted for the crime in Westchester. A Brooklyn Appellate court is deciding on the case now. Their decision could essentially make it legal to engage in this kind of sexual talk with minors online, and even to arrange meetings with them. Creepy.

This case unfortunately doesn't have any bearing on Charles Taranow, 45, a Brooklyn sanitation worker who has been charged with chatting with and soliciting undercover cops, who he thought were 14 and 15 year-old girls, for sex. When his computer was searched, cops found dirty pictures he had sent and received, which I guess is the standard definition of "depictions" of sexual material.

Taranow was busted through Nassau County's impressive Operation Teensaver program, which specifically targets online sexual predators. Nice work. Now we just have to make sure that inappropriate words are just as illegal as pictures in such cases.

Posted by Amy at 11:58 AM | Permalink

Wendie Schweikert, 36, was a 5th grade teacher at E.B. Morse Elementary School in Laurens, SC, and has been accused of having sex with one of her 11 year-old male students on several occasions in 2005.

According to the police who arrested Schweikert yesterday, she and the student began having a sexual relationship around Christmas break. He said it all began during a Christmas field trip to Frankie's Fun Park in Greenville and continued once school was back in session.

According to the Spartanburg Herald-Journal, "the student told authorities that Schweikert performed oral sex on him during the field trip to Frankie's Fun Park, then fondled him after class once school was in session. He also stated that the two of them had intercourse on her desk at a later date."

Based on the kid's testimony, the cops searched the classroom for "evidence", which they say they found. Guess Wendie didn't wipe down that desk very carefully.

This small town is understandably shaken by such flagrant misuse of power: "After 31 years in law enforcement, I thought I had encountered most anything," Laurens City Police Chief Robin Morse said. "This is kind of shocking."

The kid in question told his mom what was happening on Thursday, and yesterday Schweikert confessed. At the hearing, the boy's mother tried to tell the judge how shaken her son was, but "was choked back by tears." She said he "wanted his mother to tell the court he was scared," prosecutor Jerry Peace said. "He is terrified that the defendant will get out on bond."

The bond hearing is today; she has already resigned from her job.

Posted by Amy at 01:54 PM | Permalink

Francisco Acevedo, 54, is a Spanish teacher at South Bronx Prep, and was recently accused of mistreating a 15 year-old boy that he had asked to come live with him.

The details of the relationship between the teacher and the object of his affection are unclear, but we know the boy was spending some time in the teacher's home. One day while in the bathroom, the boy noticed a camera with the Record light on, and followed the wire back into Acavedo's bedroom, where it was attached to a VCR. The kid watched a tape of himself in the bathroom and taking a shower, and apparently reported his teacher pal. What he was doing taking showers in a teacher's apartment in the first place, who knows.

Posted by Amy at 11:17 AM | Permalink

Donald Beyer, 55, has been arrested for fourth-degree stalking of a 13 year-old boy from Islip. Beyer met the boy when he was conducting a spring production at the BayWay Arts Center; the boy was a performer. They became "friends" according to Beyer, but when he started giving the boy cards, gifts, and cash, and showing up to all his performances, his parents contacted Beyer and asked him to stop. He continued his wooing until December, when he got busted.

Beyer is a private music teacher who gives lessons in students' homes on a variety of instruments [I'm sorry I can't help it] hopefully not including the skin flute.

He is now out on $100 bail, but can no longer work at the Performing Arts Center.

Posted by Amy at 10:54 AM | Permalink

Well, it shouldn't have been hard to see how this would end up:

The attractive new substitute teacher at Strongsville High School proposed a novel incentive to her class of special-education students: Improve your grades and win a dinner date with the teacher.

Predictably:

Dinner at the Dairy Queen was nothing special, but what happened afterwards was enough to melt his ice cream. In the car in the parking lot at Westfield SouthPark mall, Bradigan said the 36-year-old teacher, Christine Scarlett, wrapped her arms around him and tried to kiss him.

Despite his initial reluctance, which probably lasted all of about .5 seconds, Bradigan started making out with Scarlett, and so an affair was born. Now Scarlett has a lot more to worry about than some melted ice cream. The article is a little vague on this point, but eventually they had a child together, but now Bradigan is suing Scarlett in a custody dispute and seeking compensation for her mistreatment of him.

Scarlett denies she ever had sex with Bradigan, but DNA tests on the child prove otherwise. Plus:

Steven Bradigan thinks his case will be bolstered by X-rated photos of the couple snapped by his high school buddies.

[source] (thanks, b.)

Posted by ADM at 07:21 PM | Permalink

Cameo Patch, 29, and her 17-year-old pretend boyfriend should have been a little more careful about the relationship they started after meeting in the classroom. She was arrested after an "informant" let police know about the goings-on, which included dates at a local restaurant and oral sex.

[thanks for the tip, bud.]

Posted by ADM at 07:11 PM | Permalink

Jared Hunter, 27, met a girl in a middle school in Bayside, Queens where he was until recently a teaching assistant. They flirted, but in an admirable show of restraint and adult decision-making skills, Hunter refrained from having sex with her. Until she was 15 and in high school.

Now she's 17 and pregnant. Hunter has told investigators his conduct was "wrong," and acknowledged the baby was "probably" his. He was even going to do the right thing (too late!) and marry this girl, but she dumped him when she found out he was cheating on her. Maybe even with someone legal!

Hunter resigned from the school in May when the investigation against him started, and school officials say he can never be hired again.

Posted by Amy at 10:36 AM | Permalink

The Siren Song of Sex With Boys is in the "Ideas and Trends" section. It covers most of our usual suspects, and includes this interesting factoid: A federal Department of Education study called "Educator Sexual Misconduct," released last year, found that 40 percent of the educators who had been reported for sexual misconduct with students were women. [link via fimoculous] -adm

UPDATE: While female teachers may make up a significant percentage of those getting into bad love situations with students, I think it's worth noting that only 4% of all child molestation cases are perpetrated by women. [source USA Today] -Amy

Posted by ADM at 02:44 PM | Permalink

Let's not forget about our lesbian sisters out there, teaching math, coaching basketball, and having affairs with 14 year-olds. Jaymee Lane Wallace, 28, was a Tampa teacher at Wharton High School who has pleaded not guilty to lewd and lascivious behaviour, which in this case means having a sexual relationship with one of the girls on the basketball team for 18 months.

She denies the relationship ever happened. While the girl has no evidence of the affair, she passed a polygraph test, and witnesses support her story. She says that Wallace approached her by stapling a note to a graded paper saying the girl was attractive. I can just see that note: "Hey. You're pretty hot. Your taut little quadratic equations totally turn me on. Call me."

I guess this tactic worked out for Jaymee! She got her student/player to have sex with her for a year and a half, only ending when the student broke it off, a year after Wallace got married to another teacher (some similarities to the UK make-out teacher.) Until she got busted.

She's gotten off easy so far: she's no longer coaching basketball or teaching math, but is still working in the school office.

Posted by Amy at 12:44 PM | Permalink

Shelley White, 25, was a geography teacher in the UK. Earlier this year she got busted for kissing a 15 year-old male student on three occasion, and this week was found guilty of abuse of trust by sexual activity with a child. According to details revealed in the case, "on two occasions she put the boy in detention and kissed him in the classroom. Later on she sent him to a store cupboard to find some paperclips and kissed him again."

She is also said to have worn low-cut tops to class and bent down to let students see down her shirt, and, bizarrely, allowed students to lie on the floor when the weather was hot to let them look up her skirt. She denies this. After the first time she kissed her student, she is reported to have said, "I can't believe I have done that. That was so stupid. I have jeopardised everything."

But of course, she denies that she was the instigator of the episodes with her student, and claims that he was the aggressor and that she was the victim. The sassy judge said, "Shelley White, you have throughout this trial portrayed yourself as a victim. It's fair to say that you are a victim, but not a victim, as you put it, of your friends, the boy, and the press, but a victim of your own stupidity."

Since the spring, when the events of her case took place, White has married her boyfriend, who is also a teacher. Lucky guy.

[tx Cushie]

Posted by Amy at 02:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The Sun, a publication almost - almost - as good as the New York Post reports that science teacher Cfyn Zachery Markwick-Day, 45, is facing jail time for sleeping with a 15-year old student. The couple met when Markwick-Day spotted his young friend in a school talent show and asked her to star in his "film." Along the way, the couple had sex in a hotel room he had reserved to "look for film locations."

But the story doesn't stop there. Apparently, this is a man who figures you shouldn't stop at one taboo when you can break them all. Why just have sex with a 15-year-old when you can also get her to dress up as a nurse? Or a nun? And the clincher? The part she was playing in the movie was - of course - his daughter.

Posted by Emily at 07:04 PM | Permalink

On Tuesday afternoon, a teacher at Jane Adams High School in the Bronx returned to her supposedly empty classroom at 3:45 to pick up her purse, and got an eyeful: Jessie Lozada, school aide and part-time janitor, with a 15 year-old female student, "engaged in a sex act." The Post says Lozada is 24, the Daily News says 22, so who knows. He was old enough to know better.

According to the interrupting teacher, Lozado and the teen scurried out of the room "just as she was putting her pants back on." Classy! The student later told police that she had had sex with Lozado five times over the past week.

Lozada was suspended from the school without pay, and charged with 5 counts of third-degree rape and endangering a child.

Posted by Amy at 04:01 PM | Permalink

Two stories today about school employees caught having sex with teenage girls they were coaching. Both men seem to have acknowledged their crimes, and have pleaded guilty.

Craig DeBaise, 43, was the girls' basketball coach at Bishop Machebeuf High School in Denver.

In 1999, he had sex with a 16 year-old girl on the team, and for three months in 2000 had a number of encounters with a 17 year-old. About the 17 year-old, he said they had built a bond and that he was "falling in love with her." We can only hope the girl doesn't harbor any tender feelings for this sleazy looking creep. He pleaded guilty to only one count of sexual assault on a child by a person in a position of trust, a very apt legal category for Bad Love. He will be sentenced in December, and could get as little as two years.

Leonard Tyrone Alexander, 27, was a dance teacher and detention monitor at a charter school in Minneapolis.

He pleaded guilty to criminal sexual conduct with two girls, ages 12 and 14, who he taught in a hip-hop dance class. He admitted that he brought girls back to his apartment for extra dance practice, but really to have sex with them, on a few different occasions. The 14 year-old thought she was going back to his apartment to braid his hair. Leonard got nine years in prison. The charter school actually closed earlier this year. So much for idealistic notions of independently-managed public schools.

Posted by Amy at 01:11 PM | Permalink

Almost 15 years after (allegedly) seducing her teenage boyfriend into murdering her husband, Pam Smart sat down with MSNBC's Rita Cosby last week to reflect on the worst decision she's ever made - the affair with weaselly-moustached Billy Flynn that landed her in prison for life.

Despite her time served, Pam still maintains her innocence, insisting that she never asked Flynn to kill Greg Smart. In a way, you have to admire her gumption. Even though every one of her appeals has been rejected, and she will almost certainly spend her life behind bars, Smart has never admitted to planning the murder. Not only that, but she bristles when people refer to her as a teacher, insisting that she was a "media coordinator" - a role that she feels makes her sexual relationship with a 15-year-old student much more palatable.

Certainly, the recent release of accomplice Ray Fowler - and the knowledge that all four of the teenage killers will eventually be freed while she remains in prison - must be a hard pill to swallow.

But all these years later, has she learned anything from the experience?

"What people can learn from me... I guess..when your head is telling you something's wrong, that your head is right. Your head is usually right."

That's right, Pam. That's absolutely right.

Posted by Emily at 08:37 PM | Permalink

September was a particularly hot month -- hot for teacher, that is. This month in Teacher Sex:

• Former NY Catholic high school teacher Sandra "Beth" Geisel pleads guilty to sex with a 16-year old boy; may have also had sex with his two friends.
• A Florida court will not allow revealing pictures of Mary Kaywanna-be Debra Lafave, who was arrested last year for sex with a 14-year-old, to be admitted as evidence. Her lawyer is arguing she was "legally insane" when she engaged in sexual misconduct in a car with her beau, while his 15-year old friend drove them around.
• The family of a 15-year old New Jersey boy is suing phys. ed/health teacher/seductress Traci Tapp and the school district that they claim knew about their affair.
• 31-year-old high school teacher Amber Jennings, who e-mailed naked pictures of herself to a student, claims that the 16-year-old was not a victim. The proof? He videotaped himself having sex with her. It gets better: during a psychiatric evaluation, she told the doctor her relationship with her husband was "somewhat strained as of late." And better: she's writing a book about it.

I can't even imagine what October's going to be like.

Posted by Emily at 01:46 AM | Permalink

Teen drama has always been a great place for trend-spotting, and no show fills that need like Fox's The OC. So, why was I unsuprised to see that in addition to its hip soundtrack, this week's episode featured some epic Bad Love between mean but sexy Dean Hess (who formerly engaged in some other questionable sexual encounters in Welcome to the Dollhouse and The L Word) and Harbor High School Social Chair Taylor Townsend? Not only was I not surprised, I thought, why the hell has it taken three seasons? And how appropriate that his title is "Dean of Discipline"?

Of course, in the real life OC teachers don't wait that long. Why, just two days ago Orange County middle-school teacher Sarah Bench-Salorio pleaded guilty to "lewd acts" with three 13-year old boys - one of whom she began an affair with when he was 11. She will be sentenced in November.

more info

Posted by Emily at 01:32 AM | Permalink

The other day, we heard about the arrest of Lawrence Major, a Brooklyn high school gym teacher who had a three-year affair, of sorts, with a female student.

Apparently, the pressure or humiliation from his arrest was too much for him to handle: he committed suicide today, shooting himself in the head near his home.

The NY Post reported that Major was featured in a documentary film about mentors, and his students seem to have liked him: "The way he teaches you, you are able to talk about your problems," said one studen. "He was very understanding." Another added, "He was our friend. He treated us like we were his kids. He inspired us. He was very truthful and he kept it real."

Well, maybe the problem is, he didn't keep it real enough. We get the impression from reading these kinds of stories that the adult figures involved get completely in a fantasy life where it's okay to have sex with 13-year-olds because you understand them and they understand you. Your sex drive, or your neediness, or your despair tricks you into ditching painful or inconvenient reality in favor of an unreality where everything is ok and you make the rules.

But, sooner or later, reality is going to catch up with you, usually in the form of a police investigation. Major might have been okay after the criminal justice system was done with him, but it seems that what he couldn't handle was the reality in which it's not okay to sleep with your students and there are consequences for your actions.

I think that's why we call this site "Bad Love." We know it's not love, but in many cases, the people involved don't.

[Cross-posted on ScaryNY]

Posted by ADM at 09:11 PM | Permalink

Today's news brings us the story of David John Miller, 40, a former elementary school teacher in the Philadelphia area, who was busted in 1995 along with his wife Maryanne for giving beer and drugs to young boys, and for having sex with two 13 year-old boys. David was released on parole two years ago, and was arraigned on Wednesday for downloading child pornography. Local paper The Morning Call reports, "Miller's laptop computer was turned over to Detective Raymond Kuter of the District Attorney's Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. He found more than 300 pornographic images, including images of boys — some 9 or younger — engaged in sexual acts, according to court records."

There are some great detectives out there who bust people for looking at internet kiddie porn. But then, there's also former NYPD detective Brian Tuitt, 38, who yesterday faced charges for a case of molesting two girls he was babysitting in the Bronx, and was also indicted for raping two girls in a hotel in Yonkers. The Daily News writes, "According to court papers, hours after Tuitt allegedly raped the two girls in Yonkers, he was arrested on a complaint by a Bronx woman who charged he had sexually abused her daughters in her home. Defense attorney Peter Brill, who represents Tuitt in the Bronx case, said yesterday his client maintains his innocence. "'I think this is a case of greed and copycats. Brian Tuitt was friends with the mother who filed the case in the Bronx. He babysat her children and tried to be a father figure to her daughters.'"

Tuitt had been a part of the NYPD's first cyberspace patrol team, and worked to identify people who download child pornography.

Posted by Amy at 04:54 PM | Permalink