Law&Crime Sidebar - 5th Grade Teacher Was Impregnated by 12-Year-Old Student: Cops

Episode Date: January 21, 2025

Laura Caron, 34, is facing multiple sex crimes charges in New Jersey over allegations that a young boy fathered her child. The connection was uncovered when the baby’s paternal grandfather noticed so many similarities between himself, his son, and the baby. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber got insight on the investigation from former prosecutor Dan Schorr.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: If your child, under 21, has been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes or fatty liver disease, visit https://forthepeople.com/food to start a claim now! HOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael Deininger, Christina O'Shea & Christina FalconeScript Writing & Producing - Savannah Williamson & Juliana BattagliaGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY 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 Wondry Plus in the Wondery app Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Agent Nate Russo returns in Oracle 3, Murder at the Grandview, the latest installment of the gripping Audible Original series. When a reunion at an abandoned island hotel turns deadly, Russo must untangle accident from murder. But beware, something sinister lurks in the grand. views shadows. Joshua Jackson delivers a bone-chilling performance in this supernatural thriller that will

keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. A New Jersey elementary school teacher is accused of sexually abusing a student for years and having his baby, despite him being a child himself. And get this? This shocking case came to light after the alleged victim's father noticed an uncanny resemblance between the teacher's baby and his own son. Now, the teacher is facing serious charges as disturbing details emerge from their alleged relationship. Welcome to Sidebar. Presented by Law and Crime, I'm Jesse Weber. Hey, everybody, this is a law and crime legal alert. Did you know that

children are being diagnosed with serious conditions like type 2 diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and the research is potentially linking ultra-processed foods to this. Yeah, well, Morgan and Morgan is stepping in to fight to hold these food companies accountable. With decades of experience, fighting large corporations, they are ready to stand up for what families deserve justice. So if your child under 21 has been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes or fatty liver disease, then visit www.4thepeople.com slash food to learn more. 34-year-old Laura Karen was a fifth grade teacher at Middle Township Elementary School out in New Jersey when she was arrested last week for child sex crimes. Prosecutors say she raped a student from 2016 to 2020, starting when he was just 11 years old.

But here's where the case takes it even more disgusting and disturbing turn, because in 2019, when the victim was 13, Karen allegedly gave birth to his child. She was 28 at the time. So how did authorities uncover this? How did they find out about this alleged abuse? This is different. So it all started with a social media post apparently because it's being reported that in December of 2024, the victim's father made a Facebook post pointing out that Karen's five-year-old child bore a striking resemblance to both himself and his son, the alleged victim in this case.

This post apparently raised a lot of red flags and sparked an investigation. We have a lot to get into. I want to talk about this more. I want to bring on former prosecutor and current sexual misconduct investigator, Dan Shore, who's also the author of two books. Am I right, Dan? What are the titles of those books in case people- Yeah, one is called Final Table, which came out a couple of years ago, and I have a new

novel coming out in August that will be distributed by Simon & Schuster. It's called Open Bar. They're both about sexual misconduct issues, and you could find them, Amazon, anywhere else that books are sold. All right, sounds good. So now I'm happy to have you here to talk about this because this is a weird one. I mean, it's a disturbing one, but the idea that the victim's father had seen and made this post, and that's what sparked an investigation. Does it usually happen like that? It's certainly unusual. And we live in an age where people are posting their thoughts on Facebook in a very unfiltered way. And usually you think if a father suspected that he might go

straight to law enforcement or to a school authority here, according to law enforcement, it started with a Facebook post where he was saying that the child looked like him and his son. And people fortunately picked up on that. That's important that if someone sees something online and there's an indication that there might be something egregious that happens, such as child sex abuse, that someone did escalate that and it did get to law enforcement and they were able to investigate it because a lot of times people see things online and they just figure, well, it's not my problem. I'm not going to do anything about it.

Apparently other people did raise flags about this and that led to this investigation and this arrest. We covered a case recently where somebody posted on social media, I forgot which platform, that they were the victim of abuse that had been going on at the school. And that, you know, things spark, things go viral, videos go viral. People said, oh, that same thing happened to me. And so it's amazing when you think about the power of social media. We talk about the negative influences of it, but the powerful influences of it actually spreading a mesh and message and gaining awareness and traction that you're seeing something like that now going back to this case according to detectives Karen have reportedly been this victim's fifth grade teacher as well as his brothers and she reportedly befriended their parents gain their trust even offering

to babysit the couple's three children at her home which is what we're about to get into is where much of this abuse happened dan do usually see that where somebody will befriend the parents you know, as a way to get into that household or bring the children into their environment. You know, you go after the parents. You go after the family. And that becomes even more concerning about who do you trust? Absolutely. I think the stereotype in society for parents is to worry about the child being grabbed in a park by a stranger or on a playground. And people, there's this stranger danger that if I turn my head for a few seconds, my child's going to be taken or something danger is going to happen. Those things do happen, but the much greater danger in society is people

that you trust, people that ingratiate themselves to a family, become people who the family looks to as someone, well, they're safe because they're with this person who we know. And unfortunately, most cases of sex abuse that I've seen in my career and I've been investigating these for about 25 years, they generally involve people that the parents knew or the child knew. And those are the ones that are often, the ones who are committing acts like this. And it's tough when you want to trust someone. I know as a parent, you want to trust the people in your community. You want to trust the caregivers. Unfortunately, those are often the people who abuse that trust, or at least the people who commit sex abuse tend to be the ones who are in positions of

trust. Unfortunately, you are very right. And that's a real, real big issue that we're seeing a lot, particularly the stories we cover here on Sidebar. Now at first, these kids, so the victim, the brother, the sister, they would have had these sleepovers, or they had these sleepovers of Karen's home. But eventually, for some reason, that hasn't really been released, the victim and his siblings, they started living full time with Karen. And in fact, during her first appearance that her hearing last week, the judge referred to Karen as a, quote, resource family parent for the children, which is when in New Jersey, our understanding is what they refer to as foster parents. And Karen attended that hearing virtually, by the way, from jail. But during

an interview with detectives, the victim's sister told them some very chilling details about what she witnessed. She said that she would often wake up to find her brother sleeping in Karen's bed, despite the fact that the kids shared a room upstairs. Even more disturbing, she claimed that Karen would enter the bathroom and lock the door when her brother was showering. And the victim's brother told police he once witnessed Karen sexually assaulting his brother when they thought he was asleep. And by the way, Dan, just to stop there, it's one thing in a lot of these cases we have the testimony or the potential testimony of the victim the child themselves you know the idea of all at a trial there they're going to be the only

ones who'll testify to the abuse but now if you have other eyewitnesses other children um that raises this to a different level definitely that because child sex abuse generally does happen with no one else around so it is hard sometimes to prove those cases and of course this defendant all defendants are innocent or proven guilty. We'll hear, as this case proceeds, what her defense is, but certainly having another sibling who's saying that they witness something, including the actions that you described, that supports that the allegations here in a significant way. Now, from the defendant's side, they'll have to demonstrate if they decide to contest these charges, why the sister might be saying that if it's not true, but if it is true, that certainly corroborates the

allegations. And we have a child here who is supposedly the biological son. of the abuse of victim. So just DNA testing from that will certainly prove that there was sex abuse that occurred since the son was underage and underage in a very significant way. This isn't someone who is just barely underage. This is someone who is very underage, very young. And if this is true, this was a significant violation of trust and very damaging to that child. Yep, 100%.

You can't forget. It's so disturbing to say, but that baby is not only a living child who is. now born into what is a very difficult set of circumstances, but also is now a key piece of evidence. Think about it like that. So going back to what I mentioned before, one of the siblings also claimed that after that baby was born, the victim moved into Karen's bedroom permanently. When interviewed by police early this month, the victim, who's now an adult, confirmed that there was a sexual relationship with his former teacher. He said that he had remained in contact with Karen up until his father's Facebook post in December. And in that post, the man said that

Karen's child looked a lot like himself and his son. He noted in the post that Karen had been his son's teacher. That post was brought to the attention of the school superintendent who then called the police. That's how this all spiraled. And according to the criminal complaint, which was been viewed by the Courier Post, after the Facebook post was published in December, the victim reportedly called his younger brother, confessed he was the father of Karen's baby. And the victim's sister also apparently told police that her brother texted.

her to admit he was the father, but demanded that she keep it a secret so Karen wouldn't get in trouble. That is a very common symptom we see as well, right? The idea of why hasn't this been reported earlier? Why is this only coming out now? It could be that you don't want to complicate the life of the mother of your child or, you know, these victims or these alleged victims, when they're so young, they don't want to get the teachers in trouble. They might not realize that anything wrong is going on, Dan. There's a number of reasons why we see this not being reported sooner, right? Yeah, we see that victims of sex abuse of all ages, including adults. There's misplaced self-flaim. There's sometimes affinity towards the abuser because

they did have an intimate relationship together and they may feel they don't want to get them in trouble. Also, if you just think about society, what do we tell kids all the time, trust your teachers, listen to your teachers, don't talk back to your teachers, right? So children are raised to think, my teacher can do no wrong. They're good people. And if the teacher is grooming them and taking advantage of that grooming and that trust to sexually abuse them, a lot of children may not understand what's wrong, what's right, or if they do, they're afraid of retaliation, they're afraid of getting in trouble. Very often, we don't know about this case in particular, in particular, but a lot of times the abusers of underage people will say to them,

if you will find out you will get in trouble, you'll be punished, you'll have severe consequences. And that can really bring true to somebody who's afraid to speak up. So what do we know about Laura Karen? Well, she was apparently raised in Pennsylvania, attended Cabrini University, which is since closed down. She played on the school's women's basketball team, studied elementary education, according to the university's basketball roster. She started working at Middle Township Elementary School number two in 2014, not long after graduating. This is according to New Jersey pension records. And the school district says that Karen has been placed on paid administrative leave pending the investigation in a statement.

Superintendent Dr. David Salvo said, when the district was first advised of the allegations, the staff member was immediately placed on and continues to be on paid administrative leave. And Karen is currently being held at the Cape May County Correctional Facility. I'll talk about what happens if she's convicted. But does school face any liability here, Dan? It depends what they knew. if they knew that something was going on or if they failed to have appropriate policies and procedures to protect this child, then there could be liability. It really depends on their response, how involved they were with leasing, what their teachers were doing, where the misconduct happened,

did it all happen away from the school or did anything happen on school grounds? Those are some of the factors that lawyers would look at when determining whether there's liability here for the school. So it's not just if they knew, it's should they have known. That's also a fair assessment too, right? Right. If it was reasonable for someone to know, for instance, if other people had reported suspicions and nothing was done with those suspicions. And we see that with other schools. I investigate educational, institutional, sex abuse in a lot of places.

And pretty often people, there's rumors going around and rumors may be not true, but rumors may be something that a school should look into to see if there is veracity. behind them and sometimes schools don't and that can often lead to liability that you heard a lot of people talking that something bad was happening and you didn't take steps to follow up on that so we don't know what the situation was here but i'm sure there'll be an investigation to look into that right and now to be clear i'm not sure if this is a surprise to anybody but if convicted she could face some serious time behind bars it's our understanding in new jersey uh first degree crimes like aggravated sexual assault carry sentences of 10 to 20 years in prison you have second degree crimes like sexual assault, child endangerment, that could result in five to 10-year prison sentences.

Dan, I don't know if you're familiar with the law on that. That's what we found, but correct me if I'm wrong, but generally speaking, I would imagine it's a long prison sentence, and if she's convicted, would it be towards the longer range that rather than the shorter range? Yeah, the ranges that you just mentioned are consistent with other states that I've worked with. And I think that because the child was so young when the alleged sex abuse started, they then the prison sentence, if she's convicted,

would be towards the higher end of that. If someone had no criminal history and someone was barely under the age of consent, it would still lead to a conviction and there would be some kind of punishment. But I think there are so many more aggravating factors here. The fact that it went on for so long, it wasn't one time.

This was allegedly going on for years. There was another child who was in the home, which as you mentioned before, that person's a witness, but also that child might also be a victim being exposed to sex abuse occurring, while that child was also in the home. So there's a lot of aggravating factors here that if true would lead to a higher sentence. By the way, if you're listening to this story, you might say,

why does this sound strangely familiar? Well, the unfortunate reason is, is because we recently told you here on Sidebar about the case of Alyssa McCormon. So this is a former Tennessee teacher who's going to spend more than two decades in prison after she admitted she raped one of her students causing her to become pregnant. The abuse started when he was just 12 years old, around the same age as the alleged victim in the Karen case out in New Jersey, and McCormann was sentenced to 25 years in prison without the possibility of parole for child rape, statutory rape, sexual exploitation of a minor. Her case, McCommett's case, made headlines, especially because of all the twists and turns and the shocking details. According to a police investigation,

McCommon worked as a fifth grade teacher, just like Karen, and then a fourth grade teacher at Tennessee Elementary Schools. The investigation uncovered allegations that McCommon targeted multiple students, typically by befriending them online while playing video games. She then used social media to convince the children to send nude photos and engage in sexual activities. It's believed that McCormon abused as many as 21 children. And when she was booked into jail in September of 2023, she was able to post a $25,000 bond, but her release had a very specific condition. No contact with the victim or any minors other than her own kids. What do you think happened. McCombin couldn't really follow the rules. She was re-arrested, this time for stalking

one of the children that she was accused of victimizing, even sending him text that he would, quote, regret this. She went right back to jail on new criminal charges of coercion of a witness, aggravated stalking, harassment, and then during a court hearing, the stunning revelation that she's pregnant. And prosecutors played a recording where McCommon told the victim she was going to have his child. I'll raise this baby, and I love this baby. I lost it up on myself. I'm going to raise this baby.

I can do this. I'm trying to tell you when it comes out fucking like you. We don't have to help me anymore. We're just, please, God, tell me you're not going to say anything. I'll never speak to again. As we mentioned, we talked about DNA testing before. The DNA testing later proved that McCormon was indeed pregnant with the victim's child. And it was later revealed by the district attorney that the mother of the victim has custody of this grandchild.

So in addition to 25 years in prison, the judge ordered that McCormon has to register as a violent sex offender, can't have any contact with the victims. And, of course, her teaching license was also revoked. You know, Dan, I'll give you an opportunity to talk about that case. But I also wanted to ask you, what happens to the child in these circumstances? Would it be that the child then goes to live with the victim in this case? This young man, who's now an adult, and going back to the Karen case, what usually happens? to the children who are conceived

during the course of sexual assaults. It's another really challenging part of this because the person who is in prison, obviously, is not going to, and allegedly, or maybe once they're convicted, not just allegedly committed sex abuse. They're not going to be given custody for a child like this. Maybe they'll get some visitation.

And the other person who was a minor when the sex abuse happened, even if they reached an age where they're an adult, they still might not be in a position in life to raise a child, right? Even just because someone reached the age of 18 or early 20s, they may not be ready to start caring for them. So sometimes you look for other family members,

maybe a grandparent, uncle, and, but it is really challenging to find someone who could give that person a stable home when they were brought into this world in such an unstable, challenging way. What would be her defense, by the way? You mentioned it before, that they might come up with defenses,

maybe say that the alleged victim in this case, the siblings are all lying, but again, the DNA test of the, baby would be pretty conclusive. Tell me what possible defense other than I guess pleading guilty. Right. Well, certainly if there's DNA showing that the child is the biological child of the two people and one is underage, that you can't contest that in a serious way. Maybe you can contest some of the aggravating factors. Maybe the defendant can say that it wasn't really going on for as long as the other person said it was, that it was a one or two-time thing. If there's another sibling or another

witness who's corroborating some of this, you have to, if the defense attorney would probably try to come up with the strategy to say, what's their motivation to fabricate? But it's really challenging. Again, you have DNA, you have another witness in the case that we've been talking about. That's really hard to contest. So the defendant could plead guilty and ask for a lighter sentence. It would be tough with all the aggravating factors to get a light sentence, but maybe they could reduce some prison time in exchange for pleading guilty and not making the victim go through a trial. I don't know. Really, really disturbing case. But Dan, sure, thanks for coming on, breaking it down with us. Really appreciate it. It was great talking with you. Thank you.

Also, one more quick update for you in this case. So after a pretrial detention hearing today, Karen was actually released from jail while her case moves forward and her next court appearance is scheduled for the end of February. We'll keep an eye on it. And that's all we have for you here on this episode of Sidebar. Everybody, thank you so much for tuning in. Be sure to subscribe here on YouTube or check us out on Apple Podcasts, Spotify. wherever you listen to your podcast. I'm Jesse Weber. I'll speak to you next time. You can binge all episodes of this long crime series. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.