Law&Crime Sidebar - Former Teacher’s Aide Could Get Life in Prison After Guilty Plea to Sex Crimes

Episode Date: January 27, 2024

Ellen Phillips, 38, entered a guilty plea to a charge of attempted online enticement of a minor to engage in sexual conduct. Phillips admitted to using social media platforms like Facebook and Snapchat to ask for sex from at least two 16-year-old boys. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber analyzes her potential prison sentence with Hillary Nappi, a lawyer who has litigated hundreds of cases on behalf of survivors of sexual abuse.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: If you’ve suffered an injury and need legal support click www.attorneytom.com/Sidebar for a FREE consultation or dial 855-TOM-WINS.HOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergVideo Editing - Michael DeiningerScript Writing & Producing - Savannah WilliamsonGuest 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. View 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. It looks like a former teacher's aide is headed to prison after she pleaded guilty to trying to entice a minor for sex. We sit down with Hillary Napi, a lawyer who's litigated hundreds of cases on behalf of survivors of sexual abuse. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime. I'm Jesse Weber. Now, we've told you before here on Sidebar about female teachers or school staff,

taking advantage of their male students, sending them inappropriate photos, providing them with drugs or alcohol, even sexually assaulting them. Very, very disturbing stuff. But now, once again, we have another story to talk about one of those educators. a teacher's aide could be facing decades behind bars in prison after she entered a guilty plea in federal court. I'm talking about 38-year-old Ellen Phillips, previously known as Ellen Shell, pleaded guilty in front of Chief U.S. District Court Judge Danny Reeves for the Eastern District of Kentucky. Phillips pleaded guilty to, quote, attempted online enticement of a minor

to engage in sexual conduct. According to police, Phillips was in sexual relationships with multiple teenage boys in at least two different Kentucky counties. She would talk to them through social media platforms like Snapchat, Facebook, or send them text messages. Reporting indicates that she would have sex with minors at the same time. A lot of this coming from her own words, apparently. A little side note here, it's just amazing the consistency in these stories we cover, right? Very similar methods that are used by these perpetrators or alleged perpetrators.

Now, in Phillips' case, in this plea agreement, Phillips admitted that in December of 2020, She tried to entice a 15-year-old boy to engage in sexual activity. She says that she messaged him repeatedly on Facebook, asking him to sneak out of his home and meet her. When he said he couldn't leave, she admitted that she offered him alcohol and oral sex and even gave him some excuses that he could tell his mother to get out of the house. Wow. Yeah. And while it's not clear Phillips had actually physically abused the minor or even met up with him,

it doesn't appear that she did, Phillips arrest Warren, said that she had engaged in sexual abusing two minors when they were both 16 years old at three different times. The mother of one of these alleged victims spoke anonymously with a local Kentucky news station last year. She said, quote, these boys are not aware of the laws that protect them and would not come forward because they thought they would be in trouble. Jusel told news outlet, quote, he said she brought them alcohol three to four times. I can't wrap my mind around the extent of what she's done.

And we believe when these teens came forward is when she was ultimately arrested. last year. And I have to say, talking about the consistency in these stories, it is so many times that you see the minors coming forward that allows all of this to come to light. And maybe we don't highlight enough the bravery of these young people enough, not easy to do this. Now, it's our understanding that she was initially charged with state crimes like sodomy and rape. Not clear if those charges will be dropped in light of her pleading guilty in the federal case. We'll talk about it. What we do know is that Phillips is scheduled to be sentenced on April 26th, and she faces a minimum of 10 years in prison and a maximum of life in prison.

Let me bring on right now a civil litigation attorney Hillary Napi. She is with me. She knows about these stories very well. Hillary, great to have you on here. I want to let everybody know that before you jumped on, two things happened. One, we heard all these police sirens outside because your window was open. And while that's good for the aesthetic of the crime show, not great for the audio, but you said something about your job.

I just want everybody talk about it because I said to you, I wish we were talking under better circumstances. So I said back to you, I wish we lived in a better world, I could then retire. Unfortunately, for me, I think that I will be working until I literally can't do this anymore. I think this story is perfectly in line with what we already know about pedophiles is make no mistake about it. That's exactly what you're dealing with, right? Somebody who is employing a set of tools, right, to groom a child, to eventually get that child to meet her and have sex is exactly what she is. And we talk about this. a lot and I think that there are often stereotypes we see in the media about what a

pedophiles should look like and it's not usually a woman but it's no different than if she were a man abusing a female child what's interesting in this story is I think that it highlights a trend in what we call sex-stortion and that's when social media apps or the internet generally is used to convince a child to either perform a sack-sac and report it meet offline it's usually memorialized with pictures being taken, and then they're blackmailed, right, to continue to engage in sexual performances so that those pictures won't be released. Sometimes, right, kids are giving over gift cards or money or, you know, whatever they have in their control to prevent these

pictures from being disclosed. And so you also just said something about bravery. It's really interesting when kids come forward at this age because there's a ton of science behind delayed disclosures. And often children who are sexually abused and assaulted or exploited don't come forward right away because of the shame and the stigma. You know, and I think that gets underplayed a lot. Boys who are sexually assaulted or sexually abused were groomed in the moment may not appreciate what is happening to them, but make no mistake, it leaves a long effect on their life. And when they are 45 and 55, they are dealing with the ramifications of what happened to them when they were 15. So well said. So well said. We've talked about that before here. We have Chris Hansen

on to talk about these cases. You know, sometimes there is a misconception about what this means, and I'm really glad you mentioned that because this is a crime. It is disturbing. And they are going to, you know, unfortunately deal with the ramifications of this moving forward. The fact that she pled guilty in federal court and omitted a lot of this, are you surprised by that? Do you think it had something to do with the state charges? So, I mean, in a former life, I was a criminal defense attorney. And I don't say that too willingly to people. That's why I do what I do now, because it just didn't work for me. But when someone is indicted on a state charge, depending on the quantum of the evidence that

exists, there could also be simultaneous federal charges. And if those two charges are being brought together, normally the person is going to plead guilty to one first, and the plea deal might encompass the other. But federal investigations are very different. They are much more intense. federal agents have tools at their disposal that some state agencies, depending on the state, do not have. And so they're able to amass much more evidence quickly. And when they are able to do that and they actually bring an indictment or they bring a charge and someone is arrested and they're

pleading guilty, it does not shock me, right? The acceptance of their guilt usually helps in sentencing guidelines, right? So, you know, that's something that I would expect, whether or not her state charges are rolled into this plea deal and she's not charged, you know, that's going to be a determination that the state officials are going to make. But I've often seen people charged in federal court and then they still deal with their state charge and they run their sentences either concurrent or, you know, one right after the other. So I don't think that Ms. Phillips will be leaving a jail cell for a long time. Hey, I'd just like to take a minute to really thank our sponsor of this episode of Sidebar, Attorney Tom and Associates. We always appreciate our partners here on the

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So if you've suffered an injury and you need legal support, click the attorney tom.com slash sidebar link pinned in the comments for a free consultation or dial 855 Tom wins. All right, let's get back to it. So obviously we've covered cases before where someone is charged both on the federal and state level, you know, for one kind of criminal event. But there's kind of different laws that apply there, both federal and state. It is a question if they'll drop the state charges in light of her pleading guilty. But in terms of the federal sentence, I mentioned it could be a. minimum of 10 years, but a maximum of life in prison, how does it work? What do you think she could be facing? You know, it's very interesting, and I think a lot of it's going to be about the evidence that

they've amassed, and I'm not as familiar, right? Some things will be publicized and other things are obviously closed to the best, but what a lot of people don't realize is that in a federal case, there's also the federal department of probation, and probation goes out and does an investigation, and they put together a pre-sentence report for that judge. So the judge has an entire file that he or she will consider before sentencing an individual. And obviously, Ms. Ms. Ms. Phillips has a lawyer. I am sure her lawyer is putting together a packet to look to try to mitigate her sentence, right, and try to have her sentence to the minimum instead of maximum. You know, so a lot will be, I think, dependent on what these children come forward and say if they put together

victim impact statements and what the real impact is on them right now, right? And unfortunately, I think for kids who are traumatized and all of this creates a trauma and it's individual, you know, some of them are experiencing symptoms right away of their trauma. Some of them, it's a very delayed onset because they don't recognize what they've been through. And until they recognize it and internalize it, their victim impact statement could vary. So, you know, I'm not sure what this judge has right now or what's being gathered, but, you know, I think her lawyer's going to have an uphill battle there in trying to mitigate what we know she's done. And part of her allocution and her admission, you know, it's egregious, right? I mean, and it brings up

questions about how children are monitored at home, but also how they're monitored online, right? And, you know, right now there are tons of lawsuits going on against social media companies for the harm that they've charged, you know, they've caused children allegedly, right? Can we talk about that for a second? And look, you know, just putting a bow on the sentencing, I'm sure they are going to, I'm not sure, but I believe they would probably put some evidence in her defense counsel about mental health and that this is a sickness and she's suffering and she's trying to be better. I won't excuse away what happened here.

Social media companies I always find fascinating because particularly with Snapchat and for those of you are not familiar with it, you know, it has a mechanism by which you can send a message or receive a message and it disappears. And that has been particularly worrisome for people who are trying to police criminal conduct because it's hard to find a record of it when those messages disappear. But even Facebook itself. So when you hear the fact that Snapchat and Facebook are being used here by someone like her to lure in victims or try to entice victims, do they face any kind of liability? And walk us through that. Yeah, it's interesting that you're asking that. So right now, there are a slew of lawsuits across the country.

They're centralized in a multi-district litigation in California, and there are a bunch of individual plaintiffs, right? So children and their parents on their behalf. There are also school districts, and I think 33 or 34 attorney generals from different states have also filed complaints against, you know, Facebook. Well, it's meta, right? So it's for Facebook and Instagram.

Yeah, I don't get used to it either. It's like Twitter and X. I still, you know. Yeah, no, it's fine. Right. And I'm just going to call it Facebook, even though it's meta, TikTok, and YouTube. And it's important to note that because these are all really popular applications, some varying degrees of how kids use them and how frequently. But all of them have the capability to make the internet a safer place. And I think that's kind of the just a little bit really boiling and simplifying what these lawsuits are about down.

But there is the Communications Decency Act, which provides immunity to internet service providers on different. levels. That's been the real focus right now on those lawsuits and the first set of motions that were filed a couple months ago to dismiss those cases. And so one component of those cases is actually for children who have been sexually exploited or assaulted through the use of those apps. I actually represent some plaintiffs in that case. And, you know, it's fascinating to me. It doesn't matter where the child lives. It doesn't matter, you know, boy or girl. It doesn't matter what application. They're meeting the same type of person and they're experiencing the same type of exploitation. And it's a play ball, right? And we've come to learn through this lawsuit that there

are certain things that each one of those companies, you know, knew about how the app was running and choices that were made. I think they'll say in an attempt to safeguard kids, but, you know, whether or not that was effective is actually the subject of the lawsuit. So they can face negligence. client negligence. Let's just clarify that minute. The more they knew there was a problem, the more that they knew that their platforms are being used for criminal conduct and they didn't do something to police it, that's where they get in trouble, right?

Is that a way that they can ultimately, that shield, that protective shield that you mentioned against liability? It chips away, or is it the fact? Well, that's the question. Is that the question? Because I mean, I have to wonder, specifically, again, Snapchat, knowing that their feature could be used as a way someone could send a message kind of, you know, inconsequite. and there's no record of it, they have to have known that their platform was being used for

criminal conduct? No, that they have to know. They have to know about the image. So, you know, a lot of times there's text back and forth, right, with no images, nothing that's creating any kind of metadata. But there are also places where these apps are being used and kids that are being exploited are reporting that their image is on Snapchat, their image is on Facebook, right? There's some sort of back and forth or something was posted on Instagram.

Instagram. And those reports are not being made to Nick Mick, which, you know, each one of these companies statutorily must report the image because it's, if there's an image of a child, right, that's contraband. Let me rephrase that. There's a sexually explicit image of a child depicting that child in a lavish matter. It's CSAM, right? It's child porn. It needs to be removed. And it's illegal. Nobody can possess it. So right now, there is actually emotion pending. And we'll see what the court does with it about these issues. whether they can actually face liability. But, you know, the idea is that they are supposed to report it to NICMECMEC.

NIC works in concert with law enforcement. The images should be removed. They should be preserved for criminal prosecutions out of the site of the general public, right? People should be arrested. And we know that that's not happening. And you can look, anyone can look up at what NICMIC has kind of compiled for the amounts of reports from each one of these companies and more, because there are more than just these four, you know, main social media companies, right?

it's staggering, right? You're talking about millions of reports a year, and it's multi-millions. And so to me, if you're reporting multi-millions of images, you know that your site, right, or your app is doing this. And so right now, the way that that lawsuit is positioned, the judge has already said that, you know, they can face certain claims.

There are still motions to dismiss pending, but there is also a California State Court case, which mirrors these allegations, allegations. And the judge there, Judge Cruel, actually said that, you know, they can face liability for their negligent behavior. And the cases are ongoing, right? They're in discovery. So, I mean, anything can kind of really happen with this next set of motions, but it's novel. And I think that it's a response to what we're starting to see happen. Kids our age, right, when they were kids, didn't grow up with this sort of access to all of

these different apps and having a digital president and being able to contact adults so easily across the world. So, you know, with that kind of access opens up, I think, a huge window for people who are looking to harm children. And for a legal point of view, it's a very, very big set of cases that's going to have a lot of repercussions moving forward. You mentioned the social media companies. I want to end this by talking about the school district. So we know that Ms. Phillips was a teacher's aide at Woodlawn Elementary School in Boyle County. Could that school, could that school district base any liability in terms of negligent hiring? I ask this question all the time when we're dealing with these kinds of cases. But you tell me. Absolutely. So I don't

know yet from what was publicly available about this case, you know, how exactly she met this child. I'm assuming it was an interaction in school and how she got this child's contact information. But if any of this behavior was taking place during the course of her employment, right, like actually during the workday on the premises, if there was any kind of physical contact at all with a child on the premises, certainly they can face liability. Right. I mean, and it's a very fact-specific and worry about what they knew and when they should have known it, but sure, and they should if that was part of her workday, right? I mean, if she did all of this completely outside of the scope of our employment,

when she was home on a Saturday night, you know, the fact that they met at school is what it is. I mean, the difficulty, of course, is if everything looked fine and it's so hard to predict what people do, that's the problem. But if this seems to be where there were multiple victims and this was happening over a period of time, that's what's particularly concerning. I think I just end it with this, and this is from the Department of Justice. They had a press release, just to give everybody an idea about how intensive this was in terms of this team to prosecute her or to investigate her.

So the U.S. Attorney's Office prosecuted this case as part of Project Safe Childhood, which is a nationwide initiative that was launched in 2006 by the DOJ, and its goal is to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. It was led by U.S. attorney's offices in the criminal division's child exploitation and an obscenity section, Project Safe Childhood, Marshall's federal, state, local resources to better locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. So when you hear that, Hillary, the amount of resources from both a state and federal level that are able to police this kind of conduct, that makes me feel more reassured that there are a way. to go after these people, maybe stop this before it, and clearly in this case with a 15-year-old, hopefully, stop it before it escalates into something else. I agree with you. I mean, I know several, you know, agents who deal with this on a federal and state level, and they're the unsung heroes.

They don't give up, and they're constantly kind of trying to keep up with the technology that will sometimes mask the information they need for successful prosecutions, but oftentimes they're very successful. And, you know, we hear about one or two stories a lot more. think now. But every day there's arrests. And, you know, it's these people who are constantly just grinding out what they need to do on these investigations to track down people who are trying to exploit our children. Hillary Nappy, such a pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on and breaking down. I know we haven't had you on Sidebar before, at least on with me. I can't

wait to have you back. Hopefully, we're not talking about cases like this, but really enjoyed our conversation. Thanks so much for having me, Jesse. I appreciate it. All right, everybody. That is all we have for you right now here on Sidebar. Thank you so much for joining us. Please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jesse Weber. I'll speak to you next time.

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