Law&Crime Sidebar - Teacher Hunted for Sexual Assault Victims in Teen Son’s Friend Group: Cops

Episode Date: November 5, 2024

Anna Marie Crocker, 33, is facing more charges in Kenosha County, Wisconsin, as more alleged victims come forward to report inappropriate interactions. Prosecutors say Crocker targeted teen boys in her son’s friend group in-person and on Snapchat. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber discusses the disturbing case with civil trial attorney David Ring.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 Deininger and 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. 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. Let us be clear. The Silver Lake Salem Joint One School District takes this matter extremely seriously. The safety and well-being of our students is our top priority. Graphic and disturbing new details are coming out about a teacher's aid in Wisconsin who prosecutors have charged with more sex crimes after her original arrest. We got our hands on the amended criminal complaint, which lays out how Anna Maria Crocker allegedly violated the trust of her students

and the consequences she could face. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by law and crime. I'm Jesse Weber. While more students in Kenosha County, Wisconsin, have come forward to accuse elementary school staffer, elementary school staffer, 33-year-old Anna Marie Crocker of sexual assault. Crocker was originally charged last month with three felonies, but on November 1st, an amended complaint was filed,

so now those charges, they're up to seven. During a court hearing, the prosecutor said that her office is being flooded with tips and said that this is just the tip of the iceberg. authorities say Crocker, a mother of four, forced herself on her son's 12-year-old friend during a sleepover. She's also accused of sending explicit messages to several other teenagers. Crocker was an educational assistant at Riverview School in Silver Lake, which has students from kindergarten through eighth grade. She was fired at a specially called school board meeting in October.

There is no playbook on how to handle situations this disturbing and sensitive in nature. and our administrative team and office staff handled this situation promptly and with the utmost seriousness and care. And for that, we are grateful for their leadership throughout this matter. Let us be clear. The Silver Lake Salem Joint One School District takes this matter extremely seriously. The safety and well-being of our students is our top priority. We are committed to maintaining a safe and nurturing environment for everyone in our district. Anyone that seeks to harm or prey on children will not have a place in our school community. To that point, was arrested Wednesday morning and removed from the district promptly her employment with the

district has since been terminated and before we dive into the new criminal complaint i do want to warn you that there are a lot of details that are difficult to listen to they are honestly stomach turning and so we're not going to get into everything we're not going to this specific but it is important to understand why she's facing such serious charges what she's facing and also the kind of punishment she could potentially face if she's found guilty So to talk about this, I want to bring in an expert on this. Trial attorney David Ring, who specializes in sexual abuse cases. David, so good to see you.

Thank you so much for coming on. Let me first just start real quick with the laundry list of charges that Crocker faces and also the sentencing guidelines if she's convicted. So we have first-degree child sexual assault. This is sexual intercourse with a child under the age of 13. Our understanding carries up to 60 years in prison. Possession of child pornography. at least three years, no more than 25 years.

Sexual exploitation of a child, this is the filming component. This is at least five years, no more than 40 years. Exposing genitals, no more than three years. Exposing a child to harmful material, up to three years. Child enticement, up to 25 years. Exposure to a child to harmful descriptions, up to three years in prison. So if she's convicted and gets the maximum penalty, David, on each charge, Am I looking at it the wrong way, or could she be looking at more than a hundred years in prison?

And is that actually reality, a practical reality of what she could be facing here? Well, yeah, she could be facing, you know, a lifetime in prison. The reality of it really probably is that she's convicted, she's going to get very, very significant time. I mean, I could see a judge sentencing her to 20 plus years in prison for these crimes. This lady is absolutely a predator, no doubt about it. She's going to go to prison for a long time. Look, she's innocent until proven guilty, right? She hasn't been convicted, but assuming all of this is true, and she gets convicted

across the board of all this, and we will go through these allegations, any kind of mitigating factors that would help her during sentencing, is it mental health issues, her upbringing, what was going on in her life, anything like that that could factor in to a case like this? all of those elements you just mentioned could factor in the fact that she's got young children she's obviously a mother with with four children that apparently are you know teenagers or are younger that could factor in and the mental health health aspect could also factor in we haven't heard much about that so we don't know but but look she's going to have to assuming she's convicted she's going to have to bring in either experts or or friends or relatives we're going to have to

come in and testify as to give some explanation of why she acted this way. I don't know if that's going to carry the day, though, because these are heinous crimes, if true. By the way, a little more background on Ms. Crocker here. So we looked at her criminal history on Truth Finder. All we had to do was put in her name and her location and the powerful background checker was able to pull up information about her. We were able to confirm that Crocker was convicted of speeding, had to pay a $225 fine. No other criminal history was listed. But it's a really great tool because long crime we partner with TruthFinder. We use it to get details on people involved in almost all of our stories. But look, even if you don't work in true crime, this can

just be an excellent resource to give you some peace of mind. It's one of the largest public record search services in the United States. And by the way, with a paid subscription service, you can get access to unlimited reports about almost anyone. And if you're interested right now, you can get 50% off of your first month of confidential background reports. You just got to go to truthfinder.com slash LC sidebar. But going back to this, here's what deputies in Kenosha County say they found out. So on October 8th, a man apparently called police to report that his 13-year-old son was forced to have sex with the mother of his friend. The alleged victim identified as ZG in the probable cause statement, told deputies that he met Crocker's son at school. They were friends. He said that

he had been to Crocker's home, quote, countless times. And the probable cause statement says, quote, Z.G. described the defendant as acting crazy every time he is over there because she is a heavy drinker. Z.G. then described an incident that occurred nine to ten months ago in the wintertime. He was at the defendant's house for a sleepover with some friends. Throughout the evening, they played basketball, went for a walk and played video games. Everyone went to bed around midnight. Z.G. slept on the couch in the basement. While asleep on the couch, he was woken up by the defendant who was naked. The defendant had removed Zigi's pants

and was on top of him. Eventually, his friends heard noises and went downstairs. The defendant tried to hide, but his friends saw what happened. Zigi went upstairs and told his friends what happened and then went to bed. David, that is just horrifying.

And also, it makes you wonder why it doesn't come out until so much longer. A, you know, you have the allegation that this happened to this young boy, but also people see it as well. Talk to me what your thoughts are on this. I've represented children my entire career in these types of cases. And it's not unusual at all that this victim would not go tell someone right away. You know, he's a boy. He doesn't know what to do. He's 12 years old. This is a shocking, you know, unbelievable incident to him. And kids don't know how to

react to that. I think she also down the road kind of threatened him and said, hey, you can't tell anyone about this. That's always very effective on the victim. And so it's not unusual at all that he didn't tell or at least didn't tell for a while, truly. And so the other thing is these other boys saw it. Again, it's not unusual for other boys who saw it not to tell. I mean, they're probably talking amongst themselves, but for them to go to an adult and say what happened, they probably think no adult's going to believe this yeah but you know what there was also apparently rumors that were going around the school about what the students saw about what happened and i just imagine if there's rumors going around people were talking about how did the school staff not know about it

well ultimately i think what happened here was jumping ahead a little bit is is another boy who she victimized did tell the school and went and told a school staffer that hey she's sending me Snapchat, sexual content, videos, things like that. So you do have at some point one victim who comes forward and tells school authority and the school authority tells the police and, you know, there she goes. She's going to get arrested. So look, it went on long enough where you eventually have someone telling an adult who does the right thing.

So let me get into this a little bit more and I'll stick with ZG because at one point, when apparently he was getting ready for football one day. He tells his mom he didn't feel well, goes to the bathroom, and he says he starts dry heaving, and he reportedly made the comment, I thought I would never have to think about it again. And that's when he told his mom what had happened. So David, absolutely horrific allegations. And, you know, this all seems to be proof that all children, male or female,

deeply affected by something like this. You know, it's one thing to not report, but look at the actual, Well, if you take that allegation is true, the physical effect it has on these victims. Absolutely. I mean, it's horrific. Look, this is a crime of child rape. If the allegations are true, this lady went downstairs and took this boy's clothes off. 12-year-old boy, she's 33 years old, took this boy's clothes off and essentially raped him.

And so you can imagine the impact that has on a young kid on anybody. even an adult, but the impact on this young kid who doesn't have the tools to know what to do, doesn't have anyone to tell, doesn't think he can tell anyone, he's holding it inside for a long time. And it's not unusual to have physical symptoms, physical sickness arise because of what happened. Truly horrific crime. It really is. And you mentioned it, ZG was not the only child that Crocker's accused of targeting. So we have this 14-year-old, JPF, those are the initials in the filing, and told the school resource officer at the local high school that he had been exchanging sexual chats and pictures with Crocker on Snapchat for, quote, a long time.

It goes back to that question about it had to take him and the other person to come forward and why did the school staff not know. But he also told this deputy that Crocker had sexually assaulted him in a parking lot in another county in August of 2024. The probable cause statement goes into detail about what ZG revealed in his forensic interview, which we're not going to get into, but it does note, Zigi said he told her repeatedly to get off of him, but she would not listen. He also tried to push her off. Now, unfortunately, the victim's trauma really didn't end there because according to police, Zigi stated that a couple months ago, someone had given the defendant his phone number. She texted him identifying herself as Anna and was telling Zigi to apologize to her for

what happened in the basement. Zigi described the defendant as trying to make him feel guilty. The defendant also told him he could not tell anyone about what happened. Zigi blocked her as a result. David, so twisted. So taking this allegation as true, Crocker, the adult, is trying to make a child admit that he was at fault for what happened, that he needed to apologize to her.

Is this something that we see in these kinds of cases? I don't know if we want to call it manipulation, want to call it gaslighting, but an attempt to stay out of trouble, reverse the narrative, right? Absolutely. I mean, it's, you see, you see perpetrators try to make the victim feel like it's the victim's fault. Hey, hey, you're the one who wanted this to happen. You're the one who texted me back. You're the one who got in my car with me. And so they try to manipulate the victim. You used a good phrase, gaslighting. They try to make the victim feel shame and guilt and fear.

And all of that plays into the victim not coming forward for a while or maybe never. And that's what they do. They manipulate these young kids into believing that it's their fault, that no one's going to believe them, that if they come forward, they're going to get in trouble because somehow they participated in this. So, I mean, this lady is, if true, it's, she's twisted and for her to try to make this kid apologize to her for what happened is, is just, it's, it's bizarre, but, you know, she somehow thought she was going to help her in some weird way. So investigators, they end up speaking to Crocker, detective interviews Crocker, and she

admits, yeah, I received this explicit video from JPF, saves it to her phone, and she also admitted to sending the video to another female student at Riverview. Why admit it? Because she has I guess you can't deny what the cell phone data shows. Well, you know, look, if criminals were incredibly smart, none of them would be behind bars, right? I mean, this lady is just so wrapped up in everything that's going on in her life and all these twisted crimes. I think she just, she can't keep track of anything. And what's really going to doom her, assuming all this is true, what we're hearing from the authorities, what's going to doom her is what's on her phone, is the authorities have her phone and they've gone through it and they have found all of these Snapchat messages

and videos and photos that corroborate exactly what these young boys are saying happen. And so that's ultimately what's going to doom her is her own, the evidence on her own phone. Let's explore that a little bit because police also spoke to another 13-year-old identified a CPW, who said he was also talking with Crocker or communicating with Crocker on Snapchat and said she sent him lewd videos. And Crocker reportedly sent the teen, sorry to say this, a video of her pleasuring herself. According to the probable cause statement, when CPW first opened it, he thought it was a workout video, but it wasn't. He clicked through the video and didn't respond. He stated he was too young for that. CPW said then he became

scared, blocked the defendant. He said he was scared because of what happened to his friend ZG who told CPW that the defendant raped him. So many different elements to this, David. One thing I didn't mention before as we're listening to this, you know, there's no such thing as consent when you're dealing with minors. But to have this added level to it, where they say, I didn't want this. I'm too young for this. I tried to push her off. And she keeps going forward. That's another insidious element to that as well. And also I have to say, using Snapchat, which you and I both know, is a social media platform where some of those things can be deleted, right? I think that's a specific kind of social media platform. Yeah, well, so two things. One, the use of force

is outrageous. And you're right. No child can consent to having sex with an adult, right? Now, a lot of times kids are manipulated and groomed, and the adults is, well, gee, they agreed to do it. No, they're under the legal age. They cannot agree. And so it's all manipulation. But you're right. Here in this case, it's just force. This is just child rape where the kids trying to fight her off, doesn't want it to happen, and she goes ahead and makes it happen.

It's a horrific crime. With respect to the Snapchat stuff, that's what makes it really deal. difficult for parents, for adults to try to, you know, prevent these things from happening because Snapchat messages, as we all know, disappear. You know, you could pick up your, your kid's phone and say, hey, what's my kid up to these days and let me go through his text messages? And, you know, unless he's deleted them, they might still be there. Snapchat messages, they're gone, right? Most of the time. And so it's really tough to detect these crimes as a parent, very frustrating, you know. And so this lady knew what she was doing.

She's using Snapchat for a particular reason because she believes all those messages will disappear. Unfortunately for her, authorities are always able to retrieve those messages because they have the tools to do so. And there are several documented incidents where Crocker had contacted other young teenage boys, typically by adding them on Snapchat, striking up a conversation. For example, another teen, RDH, said he got to. a weird message from Crocker? When asked what the weird message was, RDAH said the defendant asked him how old he was. RDH replied that he was 13 years old, to which the defendant replied, I like that. RDH blocked her immediately after that. Here's another example. The teen identified as SDW, which deputies found out when they searched Crocker's Snapchat data.

The defendant advises SDW that she saw him on the homecoming float for his high school. She then asked SDW how old he is, to which SDW replies about to be 17. The defendant then tells SDW her age and that for employment, she is a teacher and is starting to sell real estate. Well, it turns out SDW is the older brother of one of her son's friends. Not great for her. So, David, you know, again, I think it's horrifying to hear this. Really, I don't know how you argue away those kinds of messages unless you say, oh, somebody else was in person. me on the phone, which I think would be rather difficult, but, you know, you talked about the sense of grooming and the sense of luring people. It seems, though, that she was using, if these allegations are true, her own child's friend group as a kind of hunting ground.

Is that something that we've seen before where you have a staff member whose own children go to a school and then, you know, kind of use them as a way to stay in contact with these kids? As sick and demented as that is, yes, I've seen it happen a lot where the teacher or a worker at the school, their friends, their kid has their friends over for sleepovers or just to have them over, and they use that as a target for victims, their own child's friend group. I mean, as outrageous as that sounds, I have absolutely seen that happen before. And it just shows you how demented the perpetrator is. I mean, this lady, based on everything we've talked about today, Jesse, this lady is a classic predator. I mean, no doubt about it. And look, you know, society, we always think of males as being a predator. You know, a male is always, hey, this lady is as bad as they get.

She's a female predator going after young boys, and she's manipulating them using, you know, sex and video. and sexual talk to draw them in and then to take advantage of them. Because there's so many alleged victims here and now the prosecutor in the county is saying she's receiving tons and tons of tips if there are more alleged victims or more instances or more witnesses to this. Is the school district liable at all for any of this that they didn't find out about this and didn't stop it? It remains to be seen. My understanding, is she worked there for about four years. She started off as kind of a substitute teacher's aide, and then they hired her full time. Look, in my experience, nine out of ten times, there's a lot of red

flags or warning signs that school officials or administrators should have known that something was going on. But to be fair, there's other times where they didn't know, where this, for example, of this lady it was it was all text messages as outside of the classroom no one possibly could have known she was you know texting or snapchatting these boys and maybe the school didn't know but remains to be seen and it's something that should always be looked into as hey could this have been prevented because she's a school employee and presumably some of these boys went to that school it's that's where the relationship or the connection started well for now cross is locked up on a $500,000 bond. Her attorney says she is maintaining her innocence and her next

court appearance is scheduled for November 22nd. David Ring, thank you so much for coming on. Good seeing you. Thank you. All right, everybody. What a story. Thank you so much for joining us here on sidebar as we cover it. As always, please subscribe on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jesse Weber. I'll speak to you next time. You can binge all episodes of this long crime series ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.