Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Female Middle School Teacher Accused of Sex with 14-Year-Old Boy

Starting point is 00:00:00 Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. A teacher in Connecticut charged with having sex with a student 16 years later. I lay out what police say Renee DeLeon did and the charges that she faces. Plus, a teacher's assistant in Kansas also faces charges involving sex with a student. We'll break down both cases with a former sex crimes prosecutor. Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Police in Wallingford, Connecticut have charged a 52-year-old woman with having sex with a student. At the time, Renee DeLeon was a teacher at James Moran Middle School.

Starting point is 00:00:46 This was back in 2008, and police say that student was only 14 years old. A Facebook post from Wallingford police says the sexual encounters took place between April 23, 2008 and December 31 of that same year. Police wrote, the relationship allegedly included numerous sexual acts, including intercourse. Detectives conducted many interviews and executed a search and seizure warrant as part of the investigation. DeLeon is no longer employed by the Wallingford school system. Now, I contacted the Wallingford school district to see when DeLeon stopped working there. So far, my message has not been returned. But back to 2008. At that time, DeLeon would have been 36, and again, that student just 14. The student would now be around 30 years old. Police say they became aware

Starting point is 00:01:39 of this incident on April 15th of this year, and the investigation unfolded from there. DeLeon was taken into custody and charged with sexual assault in the second degree just recently and she was also charged with injury to or impairing the morals of a child. These cases involving teachers accused of sex crimes goes to show you how important it is to make sure your kids are safe. Truthfinder.com is a website that can help you research the people that your children are with every day. Truthfinder.com will give you a lot of information about a person, including past addresses and criminal history.

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Starting point is 00:02:44 You can get 50% off of confidential background reports. Just log on to www.truthfinder.com slash lccrimefix. Log on and start accessing information about almost anyone. I want to bring in Dan Shore. He's a former sex crimes prosecutor. He also has a firm that investigates sexual misconduct. He also teaches a course at Fordham University about sex crimes. Dan, thanks for coming on. Your thoughts on Renee DeLeon being charged 16 years later with having sex with this student. It sounds like it went on for about eight months back in 2008. Yeah, it's very unusual. You don't see many cases like this that are brought so many years later.

Starting point is 00:03:26 Usually when there's a case that is, that leads to an arrest many years later, it involves maybe a homicide or some other crime, but a case where there's a teacher with an underage student, there must have been special circumstances that the investigators, that law enforcement saw that made them want to pursue this many years later. When I look at this, I think that this had to have come to light because this now 30-year-old

Starting point is 00:03:51 accuser probably went to law enforcement. Would you say that's probably how law enforcement found out about this? Or what do you think the possibilities are? I mean, it seems like there's not a whole lot of information out there. And for some reason, the judge has sealed the documents in the case for 14 days. Right. So I prosecuted a lot of cases involving underage victims who are having sex with older people, sometimes teachers, sometimes not. Sometimes people disclose them years later. Sometimes a family member reported it, so maybe a parent or someone else. The fact that this victim was much older probably means that he was probably more involved in reporting it. But it's definitely unusual to see a case like

Starting point is 00:04:38 this come to light later. But one thing about the Me Too movement and the changes in societal attitudes over the last five years to a decade is that more people are emboldened to bring forward claims that years ago they felt they could not bring forward, or maybe they felt that if they brought them forward, no one would care or no one would believe them. So we do see a lot more people feeling now, okay, now I understand I can bring forward a complaint about sex abuse that I didn't feel I could before. So they said they did some search warrants. Of course they did. I have to think that related to electronic devices, potentially, whether it's phones, possibly email, computers. We just really

Starting point is 00:05:20 don't know what they were looking for, but they can't just go on the word of the accuser. I would think they'd have to have corroborating evidence. So what would you be looking for as a prosecutor to move forward on a case that is 16 years old? Sure. Well, first of all, you're right. It's very challenging when it's just based on the word of the accuser when it's so many years later. However, if that accuser is convincing and they think that person will be convincing beyond a reasonable doubt, they could bring the charges. But I agree with you,

Starting point is 00:05:52 most likely they need some corroboration. It's interesting because so many times now in cases you see search warrants executed to get email records, text messages, phone records. But since this allegedly occurred in 2008, most of us don't have devices that maintain records from back then. So maybe they went to a phone company or an email company,

Starting point is 00:06:12 or maybe there was some communication recently between the two parties where an acknowledgement was written about what happened. So maybe there was communication more recently that didn't show a current pattern of misconduct, but maybe referred to something in the past. Those are some possibilities. But definitely electronic communication is very important when it's available in showing

Starting point is 00:06:32 that something like this happened. Renee DeLeon is free on bail right now. She was, you know, she's going to appear in court on August 27th, but she posted some cash. She was released and she is innocent until proven guilty. She enjoys the presumption of innocence. However, if this is indeed true, are you telling me that this probably only happened one time in that 16-year period? I mean, it doesn't appear that these things usually happen in a vacuum. And the police did put out that they

Starting point is 00:07:05 are looking for other information. They didn't say they believe there were other accusers or victims out there, but do you believe possibly that they're looking maybe for more, that maybe other people will come forward with additional information? Because does this type of thing just happen once? Are these things possibly just one-off? In my experience, it doesn't appear that they are. Right. I think it works both ways. There are situations where there is a one-time relationship that people have.

Starting point is 00:07:39 There are other times, as you alluded to, where it's a pattern of misconduct with many potential victims out there. Certainly, whenever we see a person in authority, such as a teacher who is taking sexual advantage of a student, a proper law enforcement investigation is going to see, are there other people who might have been similarly subjected to unwanted or just sex abuse that is based on the fact that they were underage and could not consent under the law? So law enforcement, it sounds like they probably are being responsible by looking into that. But right now, we don't have any information showing publicly that there was another relationship in addition to the one that's alleged here. But maybe law enforcement is looking into that because that is the type of thing that they would want to know if they can find out more information.

Starting point is 00:08:23 As a prosecutor, though, is that something you would want the police to look into, the potential for other indiscretions or other possible victims? Because, I mean, we're talking about a 16-year period that went by where this person is making this allegation and they found probable cause to make an arrest and file the charges and then nothing else, at least nothing that they've stated publicly. Right. Well, certainly as a prosecutor, I would want to know, are there other people who might

Starting point is 00:08:56 have been involved? Another thing that's important is it's not just about the defendant. It's also about the organization, the school, and knowing what did they know at the time? Were there warning signs? Were other administrators or teachers aware of the situation? And did they fail to act on it? Because maybe not in this situation, but in others involving schools, we often see that, that people were aware of a situation. People felt hesitant to step up and say something because they were afraid of retaliation or they were afraid of causing trouble.

Starting point is 00:09:23 So a lot of times an investigation like this is also about what did the organization fail to realize at the time and what can be done differently going forward in terms of how people can report how policies and procedures are written. So that's a really significant part of any investigation like this also. Yeah, and so far the school is not returning phone calls. So it will be interesting to see allegation that she was having sex with a high school student who was 16 or older. A little bit different of a case, but still she was in a position of authority. She was a paraprofessional at Lexington Trails Middle School in DeSoto, outside of Kansas City. And the district released this statement, Dan. It says, on Tuesday, May 14th, the district administration was made aware of an allegation of an inappropriate relationship between a female classified employee at Lexington Trails Middle School and a male high school student.

Starting point is 00:10:33 Based on this information, the school district acted immediately to protect and care for those involved by suspending the employee in question. Upon being suspended, the individual immediately resigned their employment and Cassidy Alexander appeared in court. She posted bail. She's free right now, but will be back in court at a later date. So here we have a 27-year-old woman who's accused of having sex with a high school student who's 16 or older. She's still in a position of authority. You are not allowed to do that. It's against the law. And it seems like we're seeing a lot more of these female teachers being charged these days. So what do you make of that? It seems like more and more females, female teachers are getting charged. For a long time, it seemed like we were seeing a lot of men. Now it's a lot of females.

Starting point is 00:11:29 Well, I think one thing in society that's changed with, and again, part of this is the Me Too movement, part of this is other societal movements, is that we recognize that males can also be victims of sexual misconduct, especially in situations where they're underage. I think when I was growing up, there was unfortunately a societal attitude that if there was a male student and an older female, that the male wasn't really victimized,, there was unfortunately a societal attitude that if there was a male student and an older female, that the male wasn't really victimized, that there was no damage done, that he probably wanted to have sex. And I think society has evolved now. We recognize that this is sex abuse and that it needs to be taken seriously no matter what the genders are of the people involved. So I don't think there's more occurrences of older females with younger,

Starting point is 00:12:04 underage men than there were years ago, but I think people take it more seriously now when it's reported, and also people feel that they can report it in a way that years ago, because of societal attitudes, I think a lot of younger boys felt, well, I can't report this. No one's going to care. People are going to just laugh it off, because that's often been the societal attitude for a long time, unfortunately. Right. And it's a shame because it does damage these young men. And so you think it's been going on. It's just that because attitudes are changing, we're hearing more about it. Yeah, I see that in a lot of contexts where people think that there is more sexual misconduct happening now than years ago. And having been involved in investigating and prosecuting these types of cases now for about

Starting point is 00:12:49 25 years, I really think that it's not an increase in occurrences, but it's an increase in people feeling emboldened to report and also law enforcement and organizations taking it more seriously than they did years ago. So we're hearing more about it. And that's a good thing, because that encourages other people to who are experiencing similar misconduct to say, okay, this is being taken seriously, I can say something when years ago, and not many years ago, just a little while ago, people didn't have that type of confidence that if I step up, I'm going to be able to say something without retaliation, without being shunned. And that's a meaningful change in societal attitudes and how law enforcement and organizations treat these types of situations. It would be nice if some better screening could be in place. I know that, you know, you can't predict everything or screen everything, but it is interesting that it appears so many people kind of get through that screening process with the school district and get into these positions in the first place.

Starting point is 00:13:51 Right. And it's really tough. I've been involved in background screening as part of my career also. And a lot of times people don't have something in their background that would show a flag. You know, if someone hasn't had a criminal record or civil litigation or something in the media or social media suggesting that they did some type of misconduct, even a thorough screen wouldn't pick that up. But you make a great point that we need to have vigorous screening so that when there is a prior incident like this and someone's going to a new place of employment, the new employer is aware of this and either can not hire that person, or if they do still hire that person, they can be aware of this potential risk and hopefully

Starting point is 00:14:29 mitigate it, address it, make sure that something has changed in that person's life to make them reformed, which does happen. But taking that seriously and knowing the information is really important. Dan Shor, thank you so much for coming on. We hope you'll come back. Absolutely. It's great talking with you. Thank you. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.

Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Female Middle School Teacher Accused of Sex with 14-Year-Old Boy

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