Jennifer Rice had a sexual relationship with a 10-year-old boy for several months while she was teaching at an elementary school in Tacoma, Wash., prosecutors said. She also had sex with the boy’s older brother, who was 15 at the time.
Last week, Rice was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison — she won’t be eligible for release until she serves at least 25 years, the Olympian reported. “I am desperately sorry for what I have done,” Rice said in court.
The 33-year-old mother of three kids was caught in August 2007, after she sneaked the boy out of his home and drove him to another town, where they had sex at a rest stop. Rice received a mandatory tough prison sentence thanks to laws passed after another Washington teacher — Mary Kay Letourneau – was convicted of having sex with a student. Certain child molestation charges are deemed as predatory offenses when a teacher is accused of crimes involving a student.
Rice’s husband, Jason, says he still loves and supports her. “We would give anything to change what’s happened,” he told the court.
A former NPR editor who pleaded guilty to watching videos of children being raped will not have to spend any time in prison for the crime.
David Malakoff will have to register as a sex offender for 25 years, pay a fine of $500 and do 600 hours of community service. But he will not be required to do the six to eight years of prison time recommended by federal sentencing guidelines, according to the Washington Examiner.
In deciding against a prison sentence, the judge cited Malakoff’s abuse as a child. He’d been raped as a 9-year-old boy, and had looked at videos of child rape and sexual abuse for a period of five hours as a way to relive his own rape.
Before the judge’s decision, Malakoff, 46, apologized to the court: “I am ashamed. I am horrified. Most of all because I know their story. I have made their lives worse. I am so sorry,” Malakoff said. He said he will be haunted forever by the images of the children being raped, “their distant eyes, their blank faces.”
As Minor Troubles readers will recall, Malakoff worked as an editor and on-air correspondant for National Public Radio until June of 2008.
The mother of a 15-year-old girl repeatedly allowed her daughter to have sex with a 25-year-old parolee, authorities allege.
In San Bernardino County, cops caught 25-year-old parolee Anthony Vaux and the Victorville girl in the act on Sunday at the Travelodge hotel, according to the Associated Press. The fuzz had gotten a tip that the couple would be found there and that her mother knew all about it.
Vaux had his parolee revoked and was booked on charges of felony unlawful sex with a minor. A complaint about the mother has been sent to prosecutors, but so far no charges have been filed against her.
The mother of one of the molester’s victims grabbed the sex offender by his shirt and yelled at him in a courthouse hallway.
Pascual Gonzalez, of Roxbury, NJ, was awaiting sentencing on Monday for sexually abusing the woman’s 14-year-old daughter when the mother attacked him. She was eventually restrained by deputies, the Daily Record reported. The woman told authorities that she heard Gonzalez comment that her daughter was “good.” Gonzalez denied that he made the remark and told officers that he planned to press charges against the woman.
This isn’t the first time the mom has attacked Gonzalez. On Aug. 2, after she found out that her daughter had been sexually abused, she allegedly attacked Gonzalez with a baseball bat. She is not being publicly named in order to protect her daughter’s identity.
Gonzalez, a 39-year-old father of four, had pleaded guilty in January to sexually assaulting the woman’s daughter over a three-month period. He also inappropriately touched her friend, a 15-year-old girl. On Monday, Gonzalez — a volunteer baseball and basketball coach — was sentenced to five years in prison.
At the sentencing hearing, Gonzalez said he made a mistake. “I want to apologize to everybody for what I’ve done,” he said. “I wish this had never, ever, ever happened. I wish I could take it back. I really do.”
Neil Havens Rodreick II, 31, who pretended to be a 12-year-old to enroll in several Arizona middle schools, was sentenced to more than 70 years in prison Tuesday, according to the Associated Press.One of Rodreick’s accomplices in the schoolboy ruse, Brian Nellis, 37, was sentenced to 51 years in prison in March.
As Minor Troubles readers know, Rodreick was a 29-year-old convicted sex offender when he enrolled in junior high again, wearing pancake makeup to look younger. Police haven’t found any victims of sex abuse at the schools he attended, but one girl did say that Rodreick tried to grab her butt. At the time, she thought he was just an immature boy.
Patrick Connolly threatened to publicize personal info about the girls if they didn’t send him X-rated photos of themselves, authorities said. The Irish citizen, arrested in Atlanta on Friday, has allegedly hacked into the computers of teen girls around the world since 2005.
One girl who refused to send him explicit photos had the permanent files on her computer deleted, according to prosecutors. Another girl was told that he would hurt her sister. He showed up in Orlando to see another teen at her workplace. Recently, he created a Facebook profile and began contacting girls who had harassed years before.
Connolly has been charged with one count of computer hacking, but other charges are likely to follow, authorities told the Associated Press. A criminal complaint filed by federal officials names seven teen victims, six of whom lived in Florida. However, authorities say that Connolly likely had more victims worldwide.
Connolly was apparently ratted out by a former accomplice who similarly hacked into teens’ computers. Ivory Dickerson of North Carolina, who had up to 4,000 victims, was sentenced to 110 years in prison in 2007 on child porn charges. Last January, prosecutors began investigating Connolly, who formerly worked in Iraq for a Department of Defense contractor.
A convicted sex offender who helped 29-year-old Neil Rodreick pose as a 12-year-old boy and enroll in junior high in Arizona for four months will spend decades behind bars for his part in the scheme.
Brian Nellis, 37, was sentenced to three consecutive 17 year sentences with no possibility of parole, according to the Associated Press. Nellis and Roderick had met in prison, where both were serving time for sex crimes against minors.
The Oklahoma Senate has approved a bill banning registered sex offenders from operating ice cream vending trucks. “Ice cream trucks are an important part of childhood; they should not be ways for predators to lure children,” sponsor Jay Paul Gumm, a Democrat, told the Durant Daily Democrat.
The move to ban convicted predators from the trucks started with the 2004 arrest in Troy, N.Y., of a driver for Mr. Ding a Ling. Eduardo Grau, an Argentine national, was sentenced to two years in prison after confessing to kissing and fondling a 9-year-old girl. Grau was deported in 2006.
His case resulted in a 2005 law in New York and in various communities around the country, including Tucson and San Antonio. The Oklahoma bill, which is supported by the ice cream vending industry, now goes to the Oklahoma House of Representatives.
Tammy Lee Gibson, 40, the mother who beat a sex offender with a bat after he spoke to her 10-year-old daughter, was sentenced to three months in jail on Friday, according to the Associated Press.
William Allen Baldwin, 24, was living in a trailer park near Gibson, when the mother of two learned that Baldwin had been previously convicted of sexual assault on two girls. Before being sentenced, Gibson told the judge that better laws were needed to keep convicted sex predators away from children.
In a new twist on the teen sexting trend, Curtis Pickard, 17, a student at Greenbrier High School in Georgia allegedly took “upskirt” photos of his teacher with his cell phone.
On Monday, Curtis secretly snapped photos of the legs and underwear of teacher Ellen Hotchkiss, 33, according to the Smoking Gun. After Curtis showed the photos to other students, some of them reported the images to a school safety officer who seized the phone. Hotchkiss “identified her legs and underwear from the previous day,” according to a sheriff’s report.
Curtis, who was released from jail after posting a $2,600 bond, has been charged with unlawful eavesdropping or surveillance, which is a felony.
Photo by Meryl CA