Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Teacher Used Instagram To Lure Boy For Sex to Be His 'First': Sheriff

Episode Date: January 8, 2024

Louisiana teacher Tatum Hatch, 32, used her Instagram account to lure a 15-year-old student for sex, telling him she wanted to be his "first", according to an affidavit. The West Monroe high school teacher is the latest arrest in a string of female teachers who've been accused of sex crimes involving students since November. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy talks with former sex crimes prosecutor Matt Murphy about why female teachers are targeting teen boys in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show that delves into the biggest stories in the world of crime.HOST:Angenette Levy: twitter.com/Angenette5CRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoAudio Editing - Brad MaybeGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@LawandCrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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. Tatum Hatch, a 32-year-old high school teacher from West Monroe, Louisiana, is behind bars, accused of using Instagram to lure a student for sex. An arrest affidavit says Hatch told the 15-year-old boy she wanted to be his first. Hatch is the latest in a long list of female teachers we've told you about lately who've been accused of having sex with students. I'm Anjanette Levy. It's Monday and this is Crime Fix, law and crime's look at the biggest stories in the world of crime. The investigation into

Tatum Hatch started back on December 15th, when the boy told his father about what had been going on for the last year and a half and showed him his Instagram messages. The Ouachita Parish Sheriff's Office said Hatch told the boy she feared someone else would be his first. She's also accused of meeting the boy at the end of his driveway and fondling him with her baby in the car. The boy told detectives he was scared, and some of what Hatch is accused of saying to this boy in the messages is absolutely nauseating. It included her telling him she wanted him to come to her house and climb through the window, and then she would take his clothes off and vice versa. Hatch thought she wouldn't get in as much trouble if the boy came to her home rather than her going to him.

Here's what the school district said about Tatum Hatch. The employee in question submitted a resignation to the personnel department on December the 26th, 2023. The Washtenaw Parish School System continues to cooperate with local law enforcement as they continue their investigation. A spokesperson for the sheriff's office told me he couldn't comment, but they're still working on the case. The affidavit says Hatch wouldn't answer some of the detectives' questions because she feared she might lose her children if she answered them. Detectives say Hatch admitted to giving the boy between $500 and $600 over the past year because she said she feared him because of a rumor that she had heard about him. We've told you about several female teachers in different states who've been accused of sex with students since November. So are more female teachers having inappropriate

relationships with students? Or are they just getting caught more often because of technology? And kids possibly feeling more comfortable telling adults what's going on? Joining me to discuss this latest case of a teacher being accused of a sex crime involving a student and the other cases is Matt Murphy. He is a former sexual assault prosecutor. He prosecuted those cases for 21 years and a first time guest here on Crime Fix. Matt, thanks for coming on. We really appreciate it. Happy to be with you. Matt, this is an incredibly disturbing case. Obviously, these are allegations that have not yet been proven in court. But the verbiage here that this woman is accused of using on these

Instagram messages, I find it hard to believe that this was the first time this may have happened, just because it was so incredibly bold. Right. Look, when you deal with cases like this, a teacher and a student, and when the student is male, there's this kind of gallows humor, locker room sort of chuckling that goes on. And you hear it all the time when you prosecute these cases, like, oh, where was she when I was in school? But the bottom line is this is abuse. I mean, this is a good example of that because this woman has a, she's got a child one point she has a kid um i think in the back seat of her car when some of this activity takes place she's young she's 32 um uh which means not only is um is this vastly inappropriate but it means she is still capable of having kids of her

own and that's one of the things that a lot of people forget. You know, Mary Kay Letourneau is probably the most famous example of this. She had a child with her victim before he was 18 years old. And when you think about most crime, think about if you're held up in a robbery, God forbid, or somebody breaks into your home, we recover from those things. If you are a boy who is sexually abused by a teacher who has your kid and produces a child, that is something that is going to permanently affect that boy's life. And they don't have the maturity to understand what's going on. Some of them don't even have the education to understand biologically what they're doing, depending on how young they are when the teachers get to them. But this is there's there's a lot more of this than people might think. This is fairly common. And one of the bizarre parts of this is if you look in this case after case, the young teachers, the women tend to be pretty. So I'm no expert on the psychology behind this.

I think that it probably has to do with, you know, some sort of fulfillment or some sort of validation that they're not getting at home. Many of them are married. But as a prosecutor, you really it doesn't matter what their motivation is. It is abuse. And in this case, you know, the first thing they will often do, they they rarely will just confess. And a lot of times what they do is what we see here where there's some semblance of blaming the victim. Like, oh, I, you know, I gave him money. This is one of the things we read. I gave him money because I read I was worried about what he might do. Now you're assassinating the character of what was a 14 year old boy to the community.

That's also not right. That's also abusive. And these people get desperate. And this woman, she didn't want to lose custody of her own child so she began saying oh I gave him money to protect my custody status like that's not okay either so when you're talking about somebody who's warped enough to want to sexually abuse a boy we can't necessarily trust them to to safeguard against things like pregnancy or STDs or damage to the boy's development as far as his psychology. So this is once we get past the knock-knock sort of humor on it, it's very important people remember this is abuse and this woman should be prosecuted.

Yeah, there's certainly nothing funny about this, about the allegations in this case or any of the other ones. The thing that gets me and I figured you would say this, that this happens and it probably happens more often than we know. Do you think that we're hearing more about it? Because I feel like in the last few months on this show, we've covered probably six or seven women across the country who were teachers or women who are in positions of trust. You know, there was a social worker in Ohio, for instance, where they're abusing their power and their authority and their access to these kids, or at least they're accused of doing so in order to do this. And what I don't understand is that women are supposed to be nurturing. That doesn't mean that they can't be predators. But as you mentioned, a lot of them

have children themselves. And I would think that some type of maternal instinct would kick in. And you're around these kids and, you know, you're a teacher, for God's sakes. You're at school and you're supposed to be helping these kids and teaching them, not preying on them like they're like a date. It's gross. Well, not only that, I mean, you just hit the nail on the head with work, Chris. I can't imagine. I'm obviously I'm not a woman, but I cannot imagine anything less sexually attractive than a 14 yearyear-old boy. But that's not the way normal people think. That's not the way people who are sexually predisposed or mentally predisposed to commit sex crimes think. I mean,

you know, there are some differences broadly between male offenders and female offenders in the sense that male offenders often, you know, for 288s, that's the California Penal Code against child molestation. They tend to go with younger children. That's a rarer thing when it comes to women, where it's a true prepubescent child. But these cases involving teenage boys in schools, you're right, it seems like we're reading about them more and more. I think the reason for that, it's not that it's happening any more often. I think that people are becoming a lot more educated. I think that things like social media actually help the public's understanding of that. But really, what we

have in the modern era is you have this trail of evidence that didn't used to exist. I mean, when you and I were in school back in the day, we didn't have things like FaceTime or Snapchat or you're pretty young. Maybe you did, not me. But, you know, now there's this- Yes, please say that a lot. I'm just kidding. There's this trail of forensic evidence and sexual assault is a very specialized area of law enforcement. And the detectives who go into that specialty tend to be very professional, very good. And they're really good at what to look for in social media sites as well as computers. And that's a huge and growing part of the enforcement arm and the investigation arm of sexual assault cases in general. So now what we have when when I was in school, you know, there's rumors

surrounding every female pretty teacher that were probably complete nonsense. But in those days, it would be her word against the guys. Okay. Now we have the boys accusation, along with things like text messages that are almost always preserved emails, Snapchat, computer forensics, that detectives are really good at finding. And, you know, in the case that we're talking about, like like almost all of these cases, these female teachers will send naked photos of themselves. And there aren't too many 14 year olds that are going to delete those.

And in fact, there probably isn't a single 14 year old in America that isn't going to show that to one of his buddies, which is how they get caught often. You know, and, you know, the parents see them, older brothers see them, older sisters see them, friends, parents see them. There's there is it is detectives are getting better and better at this with social media. And I think there's a broader general understanding about how this is abuse. And I think that that's why we're seeing more and more of these cases. But they are interesting. And, you know, some of the parents, there's one story that I read recently where

the mom kept saying it has ruined my son's life. If there's no child involved or or nasty std you know that victims can recover both female and male um it's not like a vampire bite which is another important thing for people to remember it's not like if something happens like this to you when you're younger that you turn into that in fact sexual abuse is ubiquitous in american culture i mean there's you know huge percentages of the population male and female have been subjected to sexual abuse and go on to live perfectly healthy lives. So sometimes the parents will, you know, rightly see, you know, they're outraged by it as they should be, but sometimes they will go that emotional step too far and decide that their child is now ruined as a result of that. I totally disagree with that. That's not true. Having worked sex crimes for many years, you got to give the kid

a chance to recover from it and go on and live a happy life and have good relationships. I think the electronics and social media, you're right. That's the game changer here. Maybe this was going on a lot when we were younger, when we were in school with female teachers, but I just don't know. I mean, I felt like when we were kids, the teachers seemed much older. A lot of these teachers seem like they're on the younger side. I could be wrong about that, but predators are predators. It doesn't matter what their age is. But Matt, I really appreciate you coming on. I think one key thing here is here, too, is the fact that according to the affidavit, this boy came forward to his dad, but then said it had been going on for a year and a half. So I think really communicating to the kids is so important here that this is wrong.

Your teacher, you know, should not be doing this. So I think that's a big part of it, too. Right. I mean, imagine a imagine a 14 or 15 year old who is responsible for a child. I mean, that's where that that's where this gets really terrifying. That is a life altering event. And, you know, even for female victims in the same situation, I've prosecuted cases where male teachers have impregnated female students. And at least they they and their family have control over the outcome. In a case where the victim is a boy and the perpetrator is a woman, if she gets pregnant, decides to have that baby, that kid is stuck with that. And he's going to wind up with the responsibility at some point down the line, believe it or not, in almost every state,

he will wind up responsible for that child. And I, you know, that is where, you know, the biology comes into this, where the consequences of this, when you get past the, you know, the joking and the chuckling and all that can be absolutely ruinous for the life of a young man. So important for everybody to keep that in mind. This is, these are, this is wrong. It's, it's horrifically abusive. And again, I don't pretend to be an expert on the psychology and as a prosecutor, it didn't matter to me. It was, it was abuse and we would, we would prosecute these cases, but you know, there's a lot of harm can be done. But thankfully, look, the young man in this case, that boy, she wasn't pregnant. Doesn't appear that there's any

long lasting effect. And he'll get through the psychology of it, I think, with the support of his parents and friends. And hopefully he'll be just fine in the long run. Let's hope. Matt Murphy, thank you so much. Happy to be with you. Thank you. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix on Monday, January 8th, 2024. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy. Thanks so much for joining us. We'll see you back here tomorrow night. Until then, have a great night. You can download Crime Fix on Apple, Spotify, Google, and wherever else you get your favorite podcasts and new episodes post each weeknight at 6 Eastern time on Law and Crime's YouTube channel. Daniel Camacho does our video editing. Our head of social media is Bobby Zoki.

Our senior director of social media is Vanessa Vine. Savannah Williamson is one of our producers. Diane Kay and Alyssa Fisher book our guests. And Brad Mabey is our audio editor.