Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Teacher Had Sex With Student in Her House 40 Times: Police

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. You design your own books or notebooks or journals and you can post them and you can make money while you're sleeping. She used to sell journals on Amazon and teach in a classroom. Now, Eleni Simonson is accused of having sex with a student that she invited to live in her home. I have the disturbing allegations made against that former high school teacher. Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Eleni Simonson is a 29-year-old, now former teacher from Tarrant County, Texas. I cover a lot of these cases for you, which is really

Starting point is 00:00:42 unfortunate, these teachers who get accused of having sex with kids. But there's something about this case in particular that's very bothersome about these allegations. And I'll get to that in just a moment. Simonson was arrested and charged on December 13th with improper relationship between an educator and a student and sexual assault of a child in Grapevine, Texas, outside of Fort Worth. Police say in September, they got a report that Simonson had had sex with a former student who was 16 at the time. The student was from Honduras, according to records, and living with his uncle, who would be moving out of state. So his teacher, Eleni Simonson, invited him to move in with her.

Starting point is 00:01:23 The student's mother, who lived in Honduras, allowed it. An arrest affidavit says two weeks after the teen moved in with Simonson and her family, she began having sex with him, despite him telling her he didn't want to do it. Police say the then 16-year-old feared that Simonson would use his immigration status against him. He told police they had sex more than 40 times. Police say Simonson sent the student a nude photo highlighting a tattoo she got with the victim's name on it. They say that she confirmed she had the tattoo containing the student's name. The affidavit says Eleni Simonson denied having sex with the student. Simonson used to have a TikTok account called Laney's Library.

Starting point is 00:02:05 She sold journals on Amazon and talked about her love of reading. She had been an English teacher. Simonson worked at Killow High School, which was part of the Louisville Independent School District. The district released the following statement. The district law enforcement and child protective services investigated reports of concerning behavior by the teacher, but were unable to substantiate an inappropriate relationship between the teacher and a student at the time the concerns were reported. The teacher was immediately placed on administrative leave and submitted her resignation in February 2023. She was employed at Kilo High School beginning in August of 2022. Eleni Simonson is accused of a sex crime,

Starting point is 00:02:47 so I thought I would search her on Truthfinder.com to see what would come back. Truthfinder.com is one of the largest public record search services out there. When I looked under criminal and traffic records, Simonson's criminal charges did not appear. They're pretty new, but I could see that she lives in Grapevine, Texas. Truthfinder is great because it will show you a person's past and current addresses, criminal and traffic records, social media accounts, phone numbers, and even possible relatives. Right now, you can get 50% off of confidential background reports. Just log on to www.truthfinder.com slash lccrimefix, get that discount and log on and start accessing information

Starting point is 00:03:26 about almost anyone. Marian Bracha is a former sex crimes prosecutor. She's also a practice professor of law at Temple University's Law School. So, Marian, I want to get your first thoughts on this case where we have a former teacher now charged, it sounds like over a year later, with sex crimes involving a former student. Well, what a violation of trust and what a violation of a position of responsibility and authority and caregiving for a teacher to have taken advantage of a relationship in that way, assuming, of course, the charges can be substantiated. But at first, at first blush, you just say, what a violation of trust. Yeah, she told police in an interview, according to the documents, that this wasn't true. She

Starting point is 00:04:17 didn't do it. But there were some pretty specific details that this student offered. You know, first of all, it just seems to me like a total lack of boundaries to even invite a student, no matter the circumstances, to invite a student to live in your home. I know that there was an immigration issue and he wasn't going to have anybody to live with. But is that a red flag right there? I do think it's a red flag. And again, there are teachers out there who would do anything for their students. I think teaching as a profession is a giving profession. It's a selfless profession.

Starting point is 00:04:57 There is enormous sacrifice that happens when someone becomes a teacher, an advisor, someone who takes on that responsibility for young and developing people. But there do have to be boundaries between safeguarding their well-being and engaging in a relationship that's untoward or inappropriate. Or in this case, it sounds like abusive. And that's where I think the allegations and eventually the charges came from. You know, I don't want to get into like a political debate here about immigration or anything like that. But one thing that stood out to me was the fact that this is a 16 year old boy. And, you know, it sounds like there was an issue with his immigration status, whether he was here legally or not. We don't know that piece of the puzzle, but he was concerned that, according to what he told police, that this teacher, if he

Starting point is 00:05:52 didn't do what she wanted, would possibly use his immigration status against him because his uncle had moved and, you know, he didn't have anybody to stay with. And his mom is in Honduras. So, you know, I think we can assume maybe he wasn't here legally and he's here in the United States living with an uncle and getting an education. That to me, wow. We don't know if potentially she said anything to him about that. But yikes. That seems very kind of predatory. I mean, the whole thing sounds predatory, but to bring in the immigration being used as motivation or fodder for victimization. I think that the statutes, and of course, every state has a different statute for sexual

Starting point is 00:06:58 abuse or child abuse or sexual exploitation, but the Texas statute also envisions forcible compulsion or assault by force, a sexual assault by force to include psychological factors. So if there was some kind of psychological manipulation or some kind of threat or coercion that the defendant engaged in, like, I report you or I will, this will affect your immigration or your residency status, that may qualify under the statute as a form of compulsion or a form of coercion that would qualify as non-consensual sexual conduct. I've covered a lot of these female teachers who are accused of having sex with students. And it feels like more and more we are hearing about females.

Starting point is 00:07:50 For a long time, it just sounded like we were hearing a lot about male teachers accused of sex with female students. Now it just seems like every other week or so, we have a new female teacher accused of sex with a student. What's going on here? Do you have any feelings on that? I mean, are we just becoming more aware of it because of maybe social media and things like that? Or what are your thoughts? I am hoping that we are becoming more aware of it because we as a society are creating safer spaces for male victims to report. I think we have seen the stats from the Bureau of Justice that about one in nine adolescent females are sexually assaulted. I think it's around one in 20 males between the ages of 12 and 17 are sexually assaulted

Starting point is 00:08:40 at some point. So, of course, the frequency of it is greater for females than for males. But of course, this is also a place where we can stress that survivors of sexual assault or targets for sexual assault can be any gender. Perpetrators of sexual assault can be any gender. So violations like this are not drawn across boundary lines if there are gender boundaries. But also, I think that the willingness to come forward, the willingness to report and feel that there will be a receptive listener, a receptive investigator, a receptive trier of fact is something that weighs very, very heavily in the decision-making of a survivor to come forward and say, this happened to

Starting point is 00:09:29 me. So, if we are hearing from more male victims or more victims of female perpetrators, maybe that's because we are making changes in the right direction to make survivors feel safer and more at ease in making the reports they need to make in order to prevent future harm to other people and in order to start their own healing process. Back to the case at hand here, Marion. You know, this student is a little older now, so maybe this is part of the reason he came forward. They say, the police are saying at this point, they don't believe there are any other

Starting point is 00:10:06 accusers out there. However, they put a message out on Facebook in Spanish and in English saying, you know, we don't think there's anybody else out there. Obviously, the police are thinking, okay, this was easy access. The student was in her home. And it sounds like, you know, there were other family members in the home too, which is astounding to me. So, they don't think there may have been other students involved in this or that she targeted other students allegedly. But what is interesting to me was that the school district, it sounds like, had some inkling that, you know, something was going on because she resigned her position before the end of the school year. So they looked into it, but it sounds like they couldn't verify things 100%. So what are your thoughts on that?

Starting point is 00:11:01 Yeah, I was interested also in the timeline because I saw that she had been suspended. She was administratively suspended and then resigned shortly thereafter. And I believe that was in the spring. It would have been the spring semester of 2023. And if she was just now charged, just recently, within a few days charged, then Texas authorities would have taken more than 18 months, about 19 months, to investigate these claims. What I am wondering in the interim is how much involvement did the school district have? How much participation did the school district have with the investigation?

Starting point is 00:11:36 Obviously, school officials, teachers, administrators, school nurses are mandatory reporters. So if they get reports of any kind of abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, any kind of endangerment of a child's well-being, they are required to report. So, what I would be interested in knowing is how soon after that school investigation and the teacher's resignation last spring, was there contact between the school district and law enforcement officials to participate in the investigation and share any information that the school may have gleaned in its own internal

Starting point is 00:12:13 investigation? MELANIE WARRICK- Yeah, it's interesting. It would be interesting to know if there was ever any contact there. But the student, the former student, I guess, eventually, you know, in September reported this to law enforcement. So it would be interesting to know more about the timeline and what was going on there. And when this student actually left her home,

Starting point is 00:12:36 because, you know, wow, there's just a lot going on here. And again, Eleni Simonson has said she didn't do this and she is right now free on bail. Marian Bracha, thank you so much. It's always a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you for having me, Anjanette. Thanks so much. 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 - Teacher Had Sex With Student in Her House 40 Times: Police

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