Savannah Hulsey Pointer, FISM News
Over 250 K-12 public school teachers were arrested for child sex crimes in the first nine months of 2022 and almost three-quarters of those arrests involved alleged crimes against one of their underage students.
According to a Fox News Digital study, at least 269 educators were detained between January 1 and September 30, which equals around one detention per day. Four principals, two vice principals, 226 teachers, 20 teachers’ aides, and 17 substitute instructors were among the 269 educators. The offenses ranged from grooming to raping underage students.
One recent arrest included Trae Owens, a 29-year-old San Jose teacher who was arrested for allegedly having sexual communications with a 14-year-old student on social media. Investigators claimed that during the talks Owens asked the girl for indecent photographs and set up a time to pick her up, according to MSN. At least once, he did drive her to school after picking her up from the house.
Officers discovered that the victim is a female student at San Jose’s Lincoln High School and that the suspect is now employed as a teacher at Hoover Middle School.
Just about 16% of the total number of alleged crimes did not involve students. It’s unknown if 10% of the additional suspected crimes included students.
These statistics don’t include teachers arrested for other offenses.
Police were called to St. Stanislaus School several miles south of downtown Chicago due to reports regarding fifth-grade teacher Angelica Carrasquillo-Torres, a 25-year-old educator from Griffith, Indiana. The teacher was immediately removed from the school and later admitted to maintaining a “kill list,” as ABC News reported.
Just between Jan and May of this year, 135 public educators were arrested for sex-related crimes, averaging more than one arrest a day for the first 132 days of the year, according to a report by Fox News. The majority of the offenders, 102 teachers charged with crimes against children, were men, according to the report. There are 135 instructors and assistants who are accused of sexually abusing minors. Of those cases, 102 involved students and 30 did not. Thirteen cases involved an “unknown” victim.