She got a cleaner house; the kids got alcohol, marijuana and antidepressants. That’s the exchange that cops say an Illinois high school teacher made with two 14-year-old girls.
Kym A. Krocza, a 41-year-old math teacher in a Chicago suburb, was charged with contributing to the criminal delinquency of a juvenile. Police say that the incidents took place between January and August. A mom tipped off cops when her kid came back from a visit to Teacher’s house with booze and pot, the Northwest Herald reported.
Krozca was arrested Tuesday and has since been suspended from Grant Community High School in Fox Lake. “She befriended them before they were even students of hers,” Sheriff Mark Curran told the Herald. “She enticed them with Zoloft, marijuana and alcohol, and they would come over and do favors in terms of cleaning up her house.”
Now, would it have been better or worse if she had offered them better grades instead?
A Dallas-area child psychiatrist had to register as a sex offender after pleading no contest to charges of taking indecent liberties with a 10-year-old girl. But Dr. William Olmsted can still keep his medical license. The Texas Medical Board will allow Olmsted to practice as long as he does it in a group setting and stays away from kids. (It’s not clear how he’s going to practice child psychiatry if he can’t have contact with kids. Maybe teleconferencing?)
But now, a second family has come forward to say that Olmsted behaved inappropriately when he treated their 10-year-old daughter, the Dallas Morning News reports. In 2005, the family says, Olmsted dropped his pants in front of the girl. Her parents pulled the girl out of treatment and reported the incident to the medical board, but say there was no follow-up.
“To find that the state board knew of not one but two complaints of impropriety with young girls and yet allowed this doctor to continue his practice with children is unconscionable,” the father wrote in a statement. “I am severely disappointed with the state of Texas right now and doubtful of its ability to stand watch.”
At least one state legislator is looking into whether laws need to be changed so doctors don’t get to keep their licenses so easily. The Texas Medical Board says that currently, licenses are revoked only if a doctor is convicted. Although Olsted pleaded no-contest to the charges, he received a sentence of six years’ deferred adjudication in January, which means that judgment will not be decided until then. The victim was a neighbor of Olmsted’s who was visiting his kids when he touched her inappropriately and sucked her toes.
One Kentucky church is extremely forgiving. On Sunday, the City of Refuge Worship Center ordained a sex offender as a pastor. Mark Hourigan, 41, was convicted in 1998 of two felony counts of sexual abuse of an 11-year-old boy. He served more than four years in prison and has to register as a sex offender for life (see his registry mug shot above).
Randy Meadows, one of the church’s pastors, told WAVE TV News that Hourigan, who joined the City of Refuge two years ago, has paid his debt to society. But others aren’t so sure. Protesters marched in front of the church in Germantown, Ky., on Sunday, and some of them compared Hourigan’s ordination to the Catholic Church’s cover-up of pedophile priests. “I’m scared for the children of Germantown,” one resident said.
While many states have laws barring sex offenders from trolling Web sites such as MySpace or even driving ice cream trucks, Kentucky apparently has no statute forbidding them from becoming ministers. City of Refuge did make one restriction on Hourigan — he can’t have any contact with kids.
The judge wanted Lisa Marie Morris to be a lesson to all other parents — if you forget your child in a hot car, you go to jail.
Morris, 26, was sentenced last week to five years in prison followed by five years on probation for leaving her baby inside her car. Morris and her cousin had returned to her Augusta, Ga., area home after running errands on Aug. 7, 2008, and Morris says she thought the cousin had brought the child inside. Instead, Dalton Morris, who was just six weeks old, died in the car, where temperatures reached up to 126 degrees.
Morris pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and asked the judge not to send her to jail because she needs to take care of her 5-year-old daughter.
But Judge Michael N. Annis showed no mercy, the Augusta Chronicle reported. He said that Dalton’s death was completely preventable.
Thanks to her fast-texting fingers, an Atlanta-area teenager alerted her friends to rescue her from a sexual assault.
The 16-year-old girl was walking home when a stranger jumped out of a car, grabbed her and forced her into the woods, reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. While her head was being held down, the teen managed to text a friend for help, police said. As the girl’s buddies arrived, the suspect and two other men fled the scene.
On Tuesday, police arrested Jose Hernandez-Ruiz and charged him with kidnapping and sexual battery for the Aug. 20 attack.
Parents, be suspicious if your teen is suddenly really, really nice to you after a fight over curfew. A 15-year-old Montana girl made Jell-O for her father after an argument with him. Inside the treat: lamp oil. For three days, the girl tried to get her father to eat it, but he didn’t bite.
On Monday, the girl pleaded guilty to simple assault for the attempted poisoning in June, the Associated Press reported. A judge put her on probation until she turns 18. When the girl was asked by the judge what she thought was going to happen if her dad ate the Jell-O, she answered: “That he’d have diarrhea and stuff.”
A spokeswoman for a poison control center in Montana says that ingested lamp oil wouldn’t cause that many problems. However, breathing it could cause inflammation in the lungs.
Pop quiz: When you encounter a crying toddler in Wal-Mart do you: (a) Thank goodness it’s not your own? (b) Move discreetly to another aisle to get away from the squawking? (c) Inform the mom that if she doesn’t shut that baby up, you will, and then proceed to slap the tot four or five times in the face?
Incredibly, Roger Stephens, 61, allegedly chose option number three at a Wal-Mart in Gwinnett County, Georgia on Monday, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Stephens was arrested and charged with felony cruelty to a child. He’s being held without bond. The two-year-old victim sustained “slight redness to the face.”
A man told police that he mixed crushed aspirin tablets into a jar of baby food at a CVS drug store in San Jose and may have poisoned more baby food at another store.
Cops have recovered a possibly contaminated jar of Gerber apple-flavored oatmeal. They’re asking customers to be careful with any baby food jars that appear to be tampered with, the San Jose Mercury News reported this weekend.
David Conklin, a 29-year-old transient, has been arrested and is being held ona charge of suspicion of felony poisoning. He had called police to tell them that he had done a “bad thing.”
It’s a phone call that most parents of teens wouldn’t even think to dread. Rosemary Lumpkin got an anonymous tip on Friday night that her 15-year-old daughter was performing at Playmates, strip club in Cocoa, Fla.
Lumpkin notified the police, who raided the club. The mother, who went with the officers on the bust, saw her topless daughter chatting with an adult man. A 17-year-old girl was also found working in the club on the raid. The teens told the cops that they thought dancing was a good way to make money.
“The only thing that makes me so mad is the club is still open,” Lumpkin told WFTV News. Apparently, authorities are working to have Playmates closed down.
How could Lumpkin not know her daughter was a stripper? “Easy, because I’m not a security guard. She could be sneaking out of the window. You’ve got to sleep sometime,” she told WFTV.
Photo by Amber Rhea
A Texas father says he “just totally forgot” to drop off his toddler son at daycare and instead left him in a hot car while he spent the day at work.
Kesen Hu, 34, went to his job at PayPal in the Austin, Tex., area at 9:20 a.m. last Wednesday, and seven hours later, returned to the car, where he found his son dead. Eighteen-month-old Daniel had died of hyperthermia, police said.
Now authorities are arguing over whether Hu should be charged. Police told the Austin-American Statesman that the investigation had not been finished, but that the district attorney wanted to quick action. Hu has now been charged with felony child endangerment. District Attorney John Bradley said that he wanted to send a message about child safety.
So far this year, 28 kids have died from heat stroke or hyperthermia after being left in hot cars.