Summary June 6, 2007
SENTENCED (If you call probation a sentence for serious crimes.)
It's Massachusetts, what can we say? A fifth-grade teacher was caught smoking crack with drug dealers the first day of school. Her house had "drug monies, records of drug sales, crack pipes, drug paraphernalia, drug packaging supplies and scales." Diane Soule, 55, was given two years' probation after which the charges will be dismissed. Go figure. TT - Link
A Brownsville, Texas special education teacher, Alvaro Hernandez, 31, pleaded guilty to two FELONY counts of inappropriate relationship with a then-16-year-old girl. He will have to register as a sex offender without having to do a day of jail time. He was sentenced to five months' probation. TT - Link
A California teacher also got five years' probation for sex messaging an eighth grader. Rebecca Rogers, 24, will also have to attend counseling, pay fines, yada, yada. A school teacher at the news site placed the blame on lack of mentoring "so that she could learn to develop a healthy teacher-student relationship." TT - Link
ARRESTED
For Cocaine, possession with intent to sell: A teacher's aide, Joshua J. Clarke, 26, was arrested with a dozen plastic bags containing crack cocaine. He was was fined last year in connection with a 2004 drug charge, and in 2003, in Montgomery Country, he was given a suspended sentence and a term of probation in connection with assault and firearm charges. (Washington, D.C.) TT - Link
Arrested for sex with a 15-year-old girl, Troy Michael Bernard, 35, (old enough to be her father.) (Minnesota) TT - Link
CHARGED
With filing a false report for claiming the female principal of the school assaulted him. Charles P. Smith, 54. He had, conveniently, taped the meeting and handed it out to the media. (Lousiana) TT - Link
INDICTED and Outrage of the Day
Miami, Florida, school principal Dwight Bernard, turned himself in after he was indicted by a Miami Grand Jury for official misconduct for failing to report school campus sex crimes. Their final report is a scathing assessment of the Miami-Dade School District, the school, 21 employees and the Miami Police Department. Link to PDF final report will make you infuriated. TT - Link
Lawsuit
Taxpayers in South Carolina school district will be paying out $4.5 million for six lawsuits related to the 2003 conviction of Phillip Underwood-Sheppard, an elementary school music teacher, for molesting (at least) nine students ages 6 to 13 in 2002. No public admission of why the lawsuits were successful. TT - Link
Briefly Noted
In a strange twist, the teacher caught shooting up heroin in a classroom has a lawyer. The lawyer is a County Commissioner. TT - Link
