Law&Crime Sidebar - Married Teacher Who Repeatedly Had Sex With Student Gets No Jail Time

Episode Date: April 20, 2024

Melissa Rockensies, a married New York mother of three, entered a guilty plea to one count of endangering the welfare of a child. A teenage boy reported to officials at his middle school that he and Rockensies regularly had sex in her car and exchanged lewd messages. Instead of the seven years in prison she could have faced, Rockensies will have to complete therapy programs instead. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber explains the allegations against Rockensies, her sweetheart deal, and the lawsuit pending against the school.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: Get 50% off of confidential background reports at https://www.truthfinder.com/lcsidebarHOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo 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.

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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 married New York teacher and mother of three was charged with abusing a teenager. But instead of spending time behind bars, she managed to walk away with no prison time at all. We're breaking down her twisted messages, this sordid history, and how she managed to get such leniency,

all with predator catcher, Chris Hansen, and attorney Brian Claypool. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime. I'm Jesse Weber. Over the past several months, we have reported on multiple female teachers and educators accused of taking advantage

of their proximity and power over their students, coercing them into, sexual relations. It seemed like week after week we were covering one of these stories. But the latest case making headlines is that of 33-year-old Melissa Rickensies out in New York. And I tell you right now, this is a different one, to say the least. So prosecutors in Queens say that she raped a 14-year-old boy on a regular basis for a year. According to the Queens County District Attorney's Office, Rikensies was charged in August of 23 with rape in the second and third degrees criminal sexual act.

in the second degree and endangering the welfare of a child. Just after his wife's arrest, husband William McKenzie's told the New York Post, quote, my wife is innocent. She's the mother of three kids. She loves them very much. She's been a big part of the community at her school. We all support her. We're saying she's innocent.

I won't elaborate any further why. According to the charging documents, Rkenzies met the student during summer school in 2022 when she was dean at a middle school called Corona Arts and Science Academy. She was one of the summer school teachers, as well as a counselor for the victim. And prosecutors say that Rikensi started grooming the 14-year-old boy by having sexual conversations with him on social media. A few months later, Rikensi started meeting up with the victim inside of her car near the school where she abused him. The criminal complaint says that Rikensi's raped the victim at least once a week for nearly a year.

Now, ironically, Rikensis actually shared a post on her Facebook page at one point in time about helping kids underage understand consent. Investigators were able to get their hands on screenshots of Instagram messages between Rikensis and the underage boy that talked about these sexual activities. How all of this came to light is a little bit of a different story from ones that we've heard before. So Rikensies allegedly went to the principal of the school last summer to report that the student that she was allegedly abusing had threatened to shoot her and her family if

she didn't give him $5,000. This is according to prosecutors. It's not clear if the teacher told the person. principal why the student was trying to extort her. The victim has since denied ever threatening Rikensis. But after that, the student emailed the principal and assistant principal screenshots of his explicit alleged conversations with Rekensis and accused her of having sex with him. The victim spoke anonymously with the New York Post when this teacher was arrested. And he says, the first time that they met up in person after school, she asked if she could kiss

him while they were walking in a park. He told the post, quote, this came out of nowhere. I wasn't expecting it because she said that she had a husband and stuff. I felt weird like I had to hug her back. I hugged her. I kissed her. That's how it started. Dean claims that every time he met up with Rickensies at her car near the school, they had sex. The victim claimed Rickensies would sometimes give him money or nicotine products. He says that the most she ever gave him at least was $500. Now, the New York Post claimed that its reporters had viewed some of the text messages sent between the two, which I will tell you are really stomach turning. Rekensis reportedly wrote, quote, I want to be able to kiss those lips of yours, and, quote, I want you so bad,

and now I got to go read kids books like WTF. Okay, so that's part one. Now let's talk about part two. This, what appears to be a sweetheart deal that she seemed to have worked out, I'm not sure I fully get it, but that's why we're going to have great people to talk about it. So Rkenzies could have faced up to seven years in prison, but according to the Queen's DA, they informed us that in October, a grand jury returned an indict. of one count of endangering the welfare of a child, which is just a misdemeanor and a harassment

violation. She entered a guilty plea on both, and as part of that deal, she won't serve any jail time. She had been released without bail during the investigation. She had to permanently hand over her teaching license and resigned from the school district. She was ordered to complete a 52-week sex offender program and continue mental health counseling for at least the next year. If she completes those after one year, the court will vacate. the misdemeanor charge. For now, a temporary restraining order has been put in place that says Rickenzie can't go near the victim. That will become a full order of protection for two years. But keep this in mind, even if she fails to comply with the conditions that the court

ordered, she would just be sentenced to three years probation on the misdemeanor charge. So no prison time. Okay. Let's talk about this. Let's make sense of this. Let me bring on right now defense attorney Brian Claypool and renowned predator catcher Chris Hansen, the host of Takedown on Trueblue.com and the podcast, Predators I've caught. Gentlemen, great to have you both here. Brian, I will start with you. I'm not sure I understand this deal. If it was a deal, if it was that these higher charges weren't submitted to the grand jury or they were submitted to the grand jury and grand jury didn't come back with the rate charges. All I know is these are incredibly serious allegations, incredibly serious initial charges.

And now no prison time. What's going on? Hey, Jesse, great to see you again. Look, this is a catastrophic failure of a prosecution in this county. but not county, Jesse, this is nationwide. I've been working on sexual abuse cases for over 12 years now, represented hundreds of victims on the civil side. What I try to do on the civil side is assist the criminal side

to make sure to get prosecution. By civil side, I mean, there's a lawsuit here pending as well by the 14-year-old's family against the school district. What I'm seeing not only in California but cases nationwide is a very laxadaisical attitude to prosecuting these cases, And even more so when it comes to a woman who has sexually abused a young boy, it's a major problem because in like in this case, you make a great point. It looks like the prosecutor only submitted evidence on one count. That's that's insane. This young boy was allegedly statutorily raped throughout a year. There should have been 50 counts. But I guess does it give you the idea that there's some weird history to this? I mean, I mentioned the idea of the alleged threats. Do you have the husband defending the wife? Maybe they could improve it?

I don't know. You tell me. Not at all, dude. No, there's no way because you just made another good point. In these sexual abuse cases, Chris can probably speak to this. A lot of times it's he said she said unless, for example, he gets some videotape of the alleged perpetrator saying that he wants to do something to a minor or you have a text message or you have an email or you have a voicemail where the perpetrator saying, I want to do this.

to you. Here you have that. It's like this isn't, he said, she says. So there's, there's no mistake for these prosecutors to drop the ball. Hey, everybody. So one of my favorite things about being a host here on law and crime is how passionate our audiences. You guys, you don't just sit back and watch. No, you engage. You leave comments. You give us feedback. You make your opinions known. Can't tell you how much we appreciate that and value that. And one of the most popular opinions that we have seen is how much you love our police interrogations. And I have to agree because they are so unpredictable. They let you see firsthand how detectives uncover the truth behind a crime, the strategies they use, what suspects, defendants say. It is so important at trials. Can't

tell you enough. Well, I am excited to tell you that we here at Long Crime, we have heard you loud and clear. And we have launched a whole new YouTube channel dedicated only to interrogation videos. It is aptly named Law and Crime Interrogations. And it is your new destination for all of the most gripping and unique interrogations on the internet. We're talking the moments when killers crack, false confessions, the most elaborate cover-up schemes that still seem to fail. You can check it out. Go subscribe. Let us know what you think. Click the link in the description to step inside the interrogation room on law and crime interrogations. Chris, we talk so many times about the cases where charges are forthcoming, where they're prosecuting the person, where they got a guilty plea on

these serious charges or they're ultimately found convicted. This is a different one. Well, it is a much different case. I mean, this has been epidemic. And the two of you know this, that we, we've seen more of these cases in the last two years than I've seen in the 40 previous years of my career. So it's epidemic. And obviously, there's a situation sometimes in schools where female teachers are trying to replay a pleasant part of their life in their mind or they get off on a power trip. And based upon the texts, which nobody is disputing in this case, there's good evidence that that happened here. Now, you have this allegation that the boy threatened the teacher in the family. Is that legit or is that something that, you know, she concocted

because she knew these charges potentially were coming, that the relationship broke off or whatever happened here. To me, it doesn't make sense that they only got those lighter charges from the grand jury. It seems like there was a lot more evidence there to more seriously charge. And I honestly, I'm at a loss to explain why she's not facing more severe penalties here, more severe charges. And, Chris, this is what I wanted to ask you. Do you worry about her ability to be around other children, right? There's a part of the idea in the plea deal where she can no longer work in New York in the education system. But I'll give you an idea.

What thought about it, we have a sponsor. I don't know if you've heard of it. It's called Truthfinder. And it's this large public record search platform for people. anybody can use it. You can look up if somebody has a criminal history or if somebody, not necessarily if they're a registered sex offender, it would cover that too. But you could look up their history, even if I would imagine a misdemeanor like this would be something that would be listed. But unless you use something like that, like I don't know or you follow

the news. I don't know how you would know about her in your community because these are still serious allegations, whether or not she was convicted of a felony. Well, exactly. And we've seen this pattern over and over across the country where school districts, some of them, may do a criminal background check in their own jurisdiction, but they may not look hard enough or deep enough to see if there has been trouble elsewhere. There have been a number of these investigative stories over the years, and that's how these people get dusted up in one school district and end up moving to another state, and they end up teaching there. It seems that this is a case also where sometimes society looks differently at the female teacher having a

sexual relationship with the male teenage student. It's still viewed as, you know, a little boy's dream. It's a fantasy come true. What's the harm? Well, there is harm there. And if you ask this young man's parents, I'm sure they've got a whole lot to deal with right now. Psychologically, perhaps physically, you know, there's a reason why we have an age of consent. in our nation, and this is why kids are not capable of making these decisions until they're older and developed. We were just talking about TruthFinder before with Chris and Brian, about Melissa Rickenzie's, this idea of finding out the past of people in your lives.

Well, TruthFinder is an incredible service. They are a great sponsor of ours. TruthFinder is one of the largest public records search services in the entire world. Their whole goal is to help people like you learn the reality about the people in their lives. You can go on their website, truthfinder.com, and what you do is you type in a name. Make it simple, you type in mind. Jesse Weber gives you a good start. What happens is you automatically get access to all of these reports, including information

like phone numbers, addresses, associates, previous arrests, criminal convictions, especially in cases of predators that we cover. If you type in an address, like your home address, it tells you registered sex offenders that may live in that area too. That's the point. Unless you use Truthfinder, you may never really know what's going on with the people around you. New neighbors, friends, schoolmates, parents of your kids' friends, social media buddies. You can use TruthFinder to find out more information about them. And you really can never be

too careful in today's world. So it's just a good idea to do it. Right now, you can get 50% off of confidential background reports. Just go to truthfinder.com slash LC sidebar. Brian, you mentioned that lawsuit. Let's explore that a little bit. So the boy's mother filed a lawsuit against the Department of Education back in January saying that officials should have prevented her son's sexual abuse and in one of the filings the victim's mother and guardian states quote, at the risk of stating the obvious

the aforementioned conduct occurred without my knowledge and was kept from me by my son in significant part due to his infancy. Now quick side note the words infant or infancy often used in the filing refer to the victim. We know he's a teen boy but in law infant in a filing like this can mean underage

or a minor. Now there's also this other issue in terms of the lawsuit and whether it can even be brought, is it too late? It has something to do with a notice of claim. So the document goes on to state, quote, since I do not have any legal training, I was not aware that notice of claim against school districts must ordinarily be filed within 90 days of an occurrence. During this time, I have been concerned with trying to help my son process the trauma that is transported and move from this prolonged abuse that he has suffered rather than looking into the possibility of litigation. And then she goes on to say that she and her attorney

asked the court to allow them to file a late notice of claim. and have moved with the forward with the civil suit they're apparently looking for compensatory damages although it's unspecified walk me through that yeah sure jesse just to give an example uh last three and a half years uh i represented if you can believe this to chris's point how bad this epidemic is i represented over a hundred victims in a in a massive uh child sexual use case against the city of santa monica that's a city on the west part of l.a right on the ocean it's actually a very beautiful city, but there was this program called the Police Activities League where young underserved kids in the community would go. Like, for example, during the summer

and after school, they play games, they play sports, they'd go in the computer room and do their schoolwork. And there was a guy that worked for the city that he worked to the city IT department, pretended to be a police officer, he dressed up with an undercover outfit, you know, have a badge. He'd walk with his dog, show up with an undercover car. at all the ball games and everything, he ended up molesting hundreds, if not more kids in the 90s and early 2000s. And what happened there is when we got involved,

typically laws across the country are, you're required to first notify a government entity that you intend on suing them. A school district, any school to, any public school district is what's considered a government entity. So across the country, you're required to give what's called a notice of claim,

which you're notifying of the intent to sue. And a lot of times, like what you're talking about, and even in our case, these kids don't know. They haven't told anybody. Think about that. They haven't even disclosed the abuse. How are they supposed to file a notice of claim within 90 days? And that gives the school districts a loophole to avoid these lawsuits. But one last point I want to make, just so your listeners know this. In order to sue a school district, in not only California but nationwide, you've got to prove one or two things, that the school had actual notice of a team. or in this case, this after school, actual notice that they pose a risk of serious harm to the kids.

What do I mean by that? Somebody has previously reported, like, like Rickenzie in this case or or the guy that dressed up like a cop. It's called actual notice. If you don't have any complaint prior to that, which a lot of times these cases you don't, you can then prove it through should have known. The school should have known. And that gets to Christmas point. These school schools and after school programs across the country, they actually. just turn a blind eye, Jesse, and the big reason why is because make no mistake about it.

All these schools are big business. They are business. Public schools, they get funding, Jesse, based on how many kids show up in their classroom on a daily basis. And if you've got a rampant sexual abuse scandal going at your school, parents are going to pull the kids, they lose funding, and they go out of business. Chris, do you think that's a valid concern that Brian may I mean, the idea here, let's say the school district didn't actually know, but they should have known how this was happening for a year, and they couldn't, they didn't know about that. In your experience, you know, what do you see? Well, I see that they should have known. I think that, you know, anytime you have a school and a school program and you allow one-on-one exposure between vulnerable kids and adults, you have the potential for danger, things have to be monitored.

Now, of course, there are mentor programs. And of course, there are wonderful teachers out there who take it upon themselves to tutor these kids and they change lives, right? But if something like this is going on for a year and it's the sort of unique crime where kids don't report this right away because they've been groomed, because they're confused, they're not ready to handle this sort of intimate activity, it goes on for a while before it's reported. And then the child is embarrassed, child is shot. We'd see this across the board with adults having, you know, one-on-one exposure, ungoverned with adults in positions of power. And so the schools do have responsibility, and I'll guarantee you that if you go back and look at all of this, there were whispers, there were rumors, there were perhaps even contacts between school officials

and this particular teacher saying, hey, do you think this is the wisest way to go? We see you spending a lot of time with this individual student. And if there wasn't that contact, there should have been. So, Brian, let me close it out with you. If this lawsuit does proceed, if it's allowed to move forward, what are we looking at in terms of damages, whether this goes to trial and they're actually successful? Or there's a settlement by the school district. And do you think it would be likely settled by the school district if the court allows it to go forward? Yeah, great question, Jesse.

Typically across the country, if you're a minor and you're still under 18, even though you missed that deadline, you talked about the notice of claim deadline, Most states or counties will allow the child to file what's called a late claim because the statute of limitations is told while they're a minor. So I think this young man will be able to proceed. Back to your other question, I will tell you, I'll speak to California. Jesse, we have seen massive verdicts and settlements over the last few years in these child sexual abuse cases because of what Chris was mentioning as well. The reason why is even if his school says, oh, I didn't get actual notice of this teacher. you know, raping a young man. There are what's called red flags.

And I actually wrote a book a couple years ago. It's called The Break the Code of Silence. And I talked about, I even listed at the end of the book, over 25 red flags that you customer, any one of those, you could customarily see it as school. To Chris's point, for example, here in your point, this young man was what? He was raped, allegedly raped over a year, Jesse.

Those are red flags. Some of them took place in the school premises. Someone took place parked in a parking lot right next to the arch building. So if anybody has a set of eyes and a set ears and they're paying attention, they should see this going on. There's a legal doctrine called in loco parenthes, which means in Latin that a school sits in the place as the parent of the child. So these jurors across the country, Jesse, good trial lawyers will argue that in opening and closing statement, that there's a legal duty for schools that take care of these students. But I'll finish with this.

I mean, average settlements, for example, in a case like this would probably be in the before trial, like before going to trial, three to five million dollar range. And if you go to trial on these cases, we're seeing upwards of 20, 25. We even Jesse had a case recently out here in L.A. County for over $100 million. I'm not getting you for a child sexual abuse case. So jury, even though prosecutors aren't taking this series, juries are. And then we know the standard of proof is lower. And I will tell you, as we all know, that if this case progresses,

more information could come out. So even if the criminal case is done through the course of discovery, we could learn a lot more about the circumstances surrounding this than we did with a criminal case proceeding. Brian Claypool. Chris Hansen, thank you both so much.

Brian is always on the media. You can catch them every five seconds. And again, Chris, host of Takedown on TrueBlue.com, podcast predators I've caught. Gentlemen, thank you so much for coming on. Really appreciate it. Thank you, guys. And that's all we have for you here on Sidebar.

Everybody, 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.