MCPS Teacher Charged with 14 Counts of Sex Abuse of a Minor
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Anonymous
22 years |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
You certainly aren't the best or the brightest or the most articulate. Lot's of name calling, but not really much to say beyond the fact that you are pissed off and deserve all kinds of rights. Good luck to the kids with this angry teacher. |
Anonymous
Wait, shit happens? Do you have kids of your own? How would you feel if this happens to your daughter or niece? Would you just say, 'Eh, shit happens'.? And, are you bringing up the pediatrician in DE to make your point that teachers should be allowed to be alone with students? Do you have kids of your own? I'm the healthcare worker and we are not allowed to do anything to a minor (diagnostic or treatment wise) without an adult present. Those are the rules at the facility where I work. With my own kids, I am always with them at the pediatrician. There has never been a nurse or doctor alone with my kid. Why does a 50 year old man have the right to be alone in a locked room with a six year old girl? There is no good reason for that to ever happen. |
Anonymous
That is ridiculous. The first time this teacher was caught with students in a locked room, he should have been put on some sort of probation. And tickling?? All the parents should have been notified. |
Anonymous
| And when it does happen ( 50 year old man locks the door from inside with young girls on school property) and it is discovered, it gets handed over to the parents of the children, child welfare services, and the police to decide if that man ever goes near those kids again. It does not get quietly swept under the rug. The school administrators are complicit in the abuse. They failed to protect the children and deprived the parents of an opportunity to intervene on behalf of their children. There is no excuse. None. |
Anonymous
+1 Superintendent Joshua Starr COS Brian Edwards COO Larry Bowers Community Superintendent Bronda Mills PIO Dana Tofig Principals at 11 schools |
Anonymous
+1 I'm not an attorney, but do the parents of the victims have any rights here? It seems that the people who were trusted to keep the girls safe failed miserably. |
Anonymous
I don't agree with you. These "slap-ass" weeks, to which I refer have happened in 3 out of the last 4 semesters at Eastern. The Eastern principal has been well aware of them. How seriously can she be taking them if they keep happening? They were initially treated as a "joke" which some students didn't think was funny (a quote from the email the principal sent out). Then the principal tried to blame the incidents on the emotionally disturbed program kids (which are few in number, and she ultimately admitted weren't actually the bulk of the perpetrators). The principal has, at most, posted to the listserv about these incidents in 2 out of the 3 semesters during which they occurred. There has been no retraining of staff, no additional sex harassment training for students, no clear system of anonymous reporting set-up, no universal letter home to all parents in the main languages of the students at school, and no public reporting of these incidents on the School Safety at a Glance annual reports. IMO, the principal has brushed these incidents under the rug. The complaints of the girls and parents have not been taken seriously. Slapping ass is a sexual assault, and IMO, these incidents are not being handled as such. Getting rid of sexual harassment and sexual abuse takes a systemic commitment to training of all school participants in these issues with clear and transparent mechanisms for reporting and investigating, punishing perpetrators and protecting victims. This does not happen in MCPS and, IMO, isn't happening at Eastern. |
Anonymous
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PP, have the parents at Eastern gone to the media? Maybe get the Washington Post reporter who covered the other story (OP's story) to report on what went on at Eastern.
No 11/12/13 year old girl should have to worry about having her ass slapped at school. |
Anonymous
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http://www.gazette.net/article/20130821/NEWS/130829724/0/gazette&template=gazette
Former Montgomery County music teacher faces up to 445 years in prison for sex abuse charges Lawrence Wesley Joynes is accused of sexually abusing 15 students Seven months ago, a veteran Montgomery County Public School music teacher was arrested in Baltimore and charged with possessing child pornography. Administrators said at the time they had no reason to believe that Montgomery County students were in any of the photos. But as details from court records have emerged, the accusations against Lawrence Wesley Joynes have evolved into a decades-long tale of sex abuse. Joynes, who has been in custody in Baltimore since his arrest earlier this year, faces 14 counts of sex abuse of a minor — each count represents a victim — for incidents that took place at New Hampshire Estates Elementary School in Silver Spring. He also faces a sex offense charge and a count of second-degree rape connected with a 15th victim at Eastern Middle School in Silver Spring. If sentenced to the maximum penalty for the charges, Joynes would serve 445 years in prison. James Dills, a public defender representing Joynes in Baltimore on the child pornography charges, declined to comment on the charges against his client. He did not know when Joynes would be brought to Montgomery County or who would be defending him against the charges he faces here. Since the investigation into Joynes began in October 2012, police have uncovered more than 4,000 photos of young girls, many in sexually suggestive positions, including photos of Montgomery County Public School students, according to Joynes’ charging documents. Police documents state that Joynes inculcated a group of special students, his “lunch bunch,” to engage in sexually suggestive behavior while he photographed and videotaped them. The children were in kindergarten through second grade. In one case, Joynes maintained a lengthy sexually abusive relationship with a seventh grader — who had confided to him that she had been abused before they met, according to the charging documents. Joynes, 54, worked in 11 county public schools as a music teacher over the last 27 years, the last 10 at New Hampshire Estates Elementary School in Silver Spring. School system spokesman Dana Tofig said Joynes spent the majority of his career at four schools around Silver Spring: Francis Scott Key Middle, Eastern Middle, Cannon Road Elementary and New Hampshire Estates. How it began According to Joynes’ arrest report, he became enmeshed in a federal investigation in October 2012, when Homeland Security investigators recovered emails between Joynes and a South Carolina man. That led federal agents, along with Baltimore and Montgomery police, to Joynes’ Dundalk home on Feb. 27, when they arrested him trying to leave through the back door. Joynes said he would videotape his students and when watching the tapes, he would visualize the students performing oral sex on him, the documents said. The alleged incidents took place with students who attended the school from between 2005 to 2013. At New Hampshire Estates Elementary School, police obtained Joynes’ personnel file, and learned that in 2010, a parent had told the school’s principal that Joynes had asked her daughter if the second-grader wanted to crawl into his lap, and if the girl dreamed about him. A little over a year later, a first-grader told her mother that Joynes had tickled her during class. As a result of those two incidents, the school’s principal ordered in November 2011 that Joynes only conduct activities in public areas, keep the classroom door open during instruction, stay off the playground during recess, not sit at the cafeteria with students at lunch, and not to touch students “in any form,” according to his charging documents. In total, investigators found exploitative videos and photos of 14 of his students. In interviews with police, one of the girls recalled him abusing her when she was 5 years old, according to the documents. A charge of rape In May, after seeing photos of Joynes published in the news, a woman came forward and told investigators that Joynes had sexually abused her in the 1990s when she was a student at Eastern Middle School, according to police documents. The victim, now an adult, told police that Joynes began sexually abusing her when she was in seventh grade. “Joynes told the victim that he loved her and would take care of her. Joynes talked about God and the victim felt safe with Joynes and they performed a mock commitment ceremony,” according to the police statement of probable cause. The abuse started as kissing, but progressed to other sex acts, police said. It began in the second half of her seventh grade year through the end of her eighth grade year, the records show. Joynes communicated with the girl in letters written in a code which he had taught her; he also had her name tattooed on her right shoulder, investigators wrote. At some point during that two-year period, John Goodloe, principal at Eastern for much of the time that Joynes taught there, asked the girl about the music teacher, but she denied any inappropriate activity, according to the arrest records. Reached via phone Tuesday, Goodloe said he had asked her because he had noticed an “inordinate amount of communication” between the girl and Joynes. Goodloe, who is now pastor at a church in Northwest Washington, D.C., said the girl told him “everything was fine.” Goodloe said he had been surprised by the news. He remembers Joynes being “a throwback from the flower child ’60s period.” “I wish perhaps that she had given some indication to me or the dean of students or someone else that there was a problem or that there could have been a problem. I don’t fault her for this,” he said. In 2005, after Joynes had left Eastern Middle School and moved to New Hampshire Estates Elementary, the victim tried to confront Joynes and found a website he ran called “Bearded Wolf.” according to court documents. The website is not currently viewable online. She emailed him, demanding he “take responsibility” for his actions. Not long after, Joynes used the website to fake his own death, posting a note saying that he had committed suicide along with a death certificate, documents state. The victim initially believed the posting, but contacted Montgomery County Public Schools in 2009 and discovered Joynes was in fact alive. The community reacts The news of the allegations left parents stunned. “Nobody wants to talk about [the abuse],” said Vanessa Pinto, a member of New Hampshire Estates Elementary’s Parent Teacher Association. “I’m really worried, because I’m afraid that we’re going to forget about this issue after these thing happens ... until next time,” she said. “I hope we receive support from the county.” Pinto said she worries there may be other victims who have not come forward because of the stigma of the abuse and because the topic is “taboo.” In a June 11 confidential memo, Montgomery County Public Schools Superintendent Joshua P. Starr wrote to members of the county Board of Education about a new plan — involving a confidential database with an alert system — that would “improve the process for tracking and managing information regarding allegations of inappropriate interactions between Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) employees and students.” Tofig said discussions regarding these changes were going on last year and that implementation of the new process is planned to start this year. “This process improvement is the result of studying several cases alleging the occurrence of inappropriate behavior,” Starr said in the memo. Staff writer Lindsay Powers contributed to this report. |
Anonymous
Women moleste too. Don't delude yourself. |
Anonymous
They moleste? Oh no! |
Anonymous
+1 |