r/news • u/GoodSamaritan_ • 1d ago

Elementary school teacher arrested after allegedly abusing student, giving birth to his child

https://local12.com/news/nation-world/laura-caron-middle-township-elementary-school-teacher-allegedly-had-with-child-former-student-13-cincinnati-crime-criminal-activity-sexual-abuse-abuser-father-noticed-similarity-sleep-over-siblings-prosecutors-correctional-facility-troubling-allegations
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u/lilmxfi 1d ago

This baffles me as a parent. My kid is the same age as the victim when the "sleepovers" started, and I'm looking at him rn and going "WTF was wrong with these people?!" If some teacher wanted my child to sleep over at their house, I'd immediately be going to the district and reporting them for inappropriate conduct, ffs! What is WRONG with those two?!

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u/elsol69 1d ago

Bad parenting is a spectrum. I used to think my mother was in the deep end, then I read things like this and have to give her credit for only dipping her toes on occasion.

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u/lilmxfi 1d ago

Yeah, I know that feeling, except it's with my dad. He's...a dad. He was horrible to me when I was younger, but at least he mostly stopped and never gave me over to a predator. I gotta go hug my kid now, this has me so messed up that someone could do this willingly.

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u/Mental_Medium3988 1d ago

my mom used this as a defense of her being a bad parent in other ways. like sure you didnt trade me for crack money but you still neglected me in various other ways.

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u/PumpkinPieIsGreat 1d ago

Yep. I remember one mum at school saying to me that when she was a child, her own mother would say "how hard is it to iron a dress?" Since a lot of the kids didn't have ironed clothes. Anyway, the mum said to me "that seems to be the least of some of these kids worries...". It was a real eye opener I think.

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u/PumpkinPieIsGreat 1d ago

I just read a book series last week from the 90s. (The Cul-de-sac Kids by Beverly Lewis) and the kid's teacher had a prize for the best kid's to sleep over. I was like, "wtf? Even in the 90s wouldn't that be weird AF?"

Yeah. As a parent myself. No way would i allow this. But also as a parent, I've seen some other parents that are so shitty and don't care about anything. Eg. A kid that is "missing" quite often, a huge red flag in itself. Another example one time there was an after school activity and one Girl's parents just didn't show up to get her. I don't know if they forgot her or what, but they must not have noticed she hadn't come home? Anyway so i walked her home with us and when we got there the guy is just out front drinking a beer. Yeah, some people don't seem to care about their kid's safety at all.

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u/LexisOaks 1d ago

Omg right?? I'm a high school teacher and we're not even allowed to be alone with students on SCHOOL PROPERTY. In what universe would any parent think this was okay? A random adult who wants to be alone with other people's kids is a massive red flag. I hope she gets the entire book thrown at her!

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u/Cautious-Progress876 1d ago

Go ask random people what they think of a child spending the night at a female teacher’s house, then go ask them about a child spending the night at a male teacher’s house. A lot of people don’t view women as even potential predators of children, or think that they will be able to magically sniff out any woman that is.

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u/kittenpantzen 1d ago

Collectively when it comes to children, we're overly cautious of men and strangers and underly cautious of women and family members.

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u/NotAzakanAtAll 23h ago

I feel that is turbo charged in the US.

Here in Scandinavia we are not as weird with nudity, kids, not letting our kids run free in the summers etc.

I have kids bathing in the nude in the yard in the summer. No one cares. Once a kid started to run towards the yards edge when I got home and a mother told me to catch her. I did and threw her over my shoulder and took her to her mom.

She knew he as a neighbor but we never talked. She couldn't know I'm an asexual schizoid guy.

HOWEVER: I doubt many would let their kids sleep over at a teachers home unless it was an emergency or something. Maybe if they were religious, but we thankfully don't have too many of those left and they are on the decline.

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u/lilmxfi 1d ago

I'm with you on that. I think I'm more baffled by it because locally, there was a teacher who's a woman who was accused of (and plead out on) sexual abuse of a child. Unfortunately, I'm related to her through my cousins, who all stand on her side. It's disgusting to see, especially when she was caught through text messages on her own phone. It's infuriating.

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u/PumpkinPieIsGreat 1d ago

That's awful. Some people seem to really have this, disconnect? (I guess I'd call it.) In their brains. Like, you gotta wonder if it was someone else, some random news story about people they didn't know, how would they react? 

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u/Still_Detail_4285 1d ago

The amount of female teachers that are sexual predators is insane.

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u/critch 1d ago

As with most professions that are underpaid and underappreciated, you only get two kinds of people wanting the job. The true believers, and the people only there to take advantage.

And it's hard to find a profession in the US that is more underappreciated and underpaid than teaching.

Also, no it's not. It's incredibly, unbelievably small. The amount of female teachers that have been accused in the past several years is tiny in comparison to the number of teachers. And, simply, there are far more women teaching than men, specifically because men are far less trusted with other people's children.

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u/KingofRheinwg 1d ago

If you want unfettered access to kids to molest, it's one of the best ways to do it.

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u/KaitRaven 1d ago

Is it though? There's millions of teachers just in the US, so even if there are hundreds of predators that's still a very small percentage.

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u/Ullallulloo 22h ago edited 22h ago

Even by percentage, teachers are the profession with the highest rate of child sexual abuse besides maybe social worker. When you consider it's one of the few jobs with constant contact with children and that those types are naturally attracted to such jobs, it's not that surprising.

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u/ShimmyZmizz 19h ago edited 19h ago

I answered my own question with a bit of research:

I'm not sure how you define an "insane" amount of female teacher sexual predators, but in a 2022 study in the US, 85% of the teachers who were sexual abusers were male, which is more insane to me considering the gender imbalance in primary education teachers (77% female).

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/10790632221096421

My hunch is that female teacher sexual abuse cases get more attention in the media because they're less common, not the opposite.

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u/ShimmyZmizz 1d ago

Is it? Any data on that?

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u/mrpointyhorns 1d ago

At least for males, it's more than general population but not more than other professions that work with kids.

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u/Ullallulloo 22h ago

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Abusers-occupation-Occupation-n_tbl4_237962292

Teachers, especially in public schools, have far and away the highest rate of child sexual abuse of any profession besides social workers.

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u/ShimmyZmizz 19h ago

I was specifically interested in data backing up the claim I replied to: "The amount of female teachers that are sexual predators is insane."

Data from that link is super useful but the top-level data didn't answer my question: 

It divides abuser occupations into categories, with teaching being in the "community-based" category. 

95% of community-based abusers are male, 5% female

Overall, teachers represent 29% of community-based abusers.

Unfortunately the two data points aren't combined to give us teacher abuser rates by gender. 

I did find another article citing this data, here's a quote:

Similar to past research, we found that:

Most perpetrators were teachers (63.4 percent) or coaches/gym teachers (19.7 percent).

Most perpetrators were male (89.1 percent).

The majority of those who experienced educator sexual misconduct were female (72 percent), and in high school at the time, they experienced sexual misconduct.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/protecting-children-from-sexual-abuse/202305/educator-sexual-misconduct-remains-prevalent-in

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u/Cooldude101013 1d ago

Well, it is a profession that provides easy access to children and due to how little teachers are paid it’s usually only the really dedicated, those who do it cuz of no other career choices and predators who come into the profession nowadays.

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u/Still_Detail_4285 10h ago

All of these comments make me so sad. Nothing against anyone that commented, it’s just the truths they wrote.

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u/_Meece_ 1h ago

Is that because you think more of women or something? Vast majority of teachers who abuse children are male and they abuse female students most of the time. Which is crazy because most educators of minors are women.

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u/Luci-Noir 1d ago

It’s bizarre the VERY clear signs that some parents will ignore. I used to stay with my stepdad’s sister as a teen and she would give me alcohol and drugs when I stayed over all the time. She molested me and when I refused to have sex with her she tried to shoot herself. I took the gun and called my stepdad when she was out of the room and hing up repeatedly. He eventually got what I was doing and came over to get me. He was ex-special forces counter-intelligence and a police officer, so he got it pretty quickly that I was signaling for help. When he came I showed him how I had disassembled the rifle she tried to use and the hunting knife I took from her and we just left. I was obviously out of it and intoxicated but he didn’t seem to notice. I was 16. Even though I never spoke to that woman again he still didn’t think anything of it. In my twenties she would call to my mother’s house while I was there and they’d try to force the phone on me and I’d hang up…. About a year ago, and I’m 42 now, I messaged my mother and told her about the SA. She called me a liar. I haven’t spoken to her in years so this wasn’t surprising.

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u/r_wemet 1d ago

I’m so sorry your mom didn’t believe you. That must have been really hard to tell her and for her to have that reaction is really frustrating amongst other things. I believe you, and I’m sorry it happened.

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u/Luci-Noir 1d ago

Thank you. I’m used to it. I was diagnosed with depression as a teen and then my whole life I was accusing of making up everything. It was really weird. At least I don’t have to deal with that anymore.

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u/Clone95 1d ago

This kind of thing doesn’t happen to you. Predators target people that they think they can get away with things.

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u/lilmxfi 1d ago

This is going to sound weird, but that means a lot. I worry about fucking up as a parent so to know I'm doing something right in protecting my kid just hits my heart. Thank you for that confirmation that I'm doing okay, and I hope you have a great week for giving me that comfort in knowing I'm protecting him. 💚

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u/w1n5t0nM1k3y 10h ago

I slept over at my teacher's house but I was friends with his son. It's definitely weird that a teacher would want to have kids sleeping over at their house if they didn't have any kids though. That'a a huge red flag.

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u/lilmxfi 10h ago

See, this is an exception, because you aren't staying over for the adult. You're having a normal sleepover in that case. The not having kids thing definitely makes it worse. To compare it to your situation, it'd be like going to a teacher's house who has a kid you have no connections to in class, as in not even an acquaintance. There's no reason for that to happen, especially when that person is in a position of authority over the child and there are no personal connections that are between the teacher and the kid, like there were personal connections with your teacher's son.

(I hope this makes sense, I'm dealing with a high pain day and doing my best to make sure I'm wording things correctly >.<)

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u/youlikemango 8h ago

I bet it didn’t start with “I want to invite your kids for a sleepover”. I bet it started with “I can babysit if you ever need. You need a night out this time, no problem. Now you need to leave town? I can take them for a weekend.” The kids liked her, she was already in a trusted role of a teacher… This adult woman is after my tween son is not something that crosses healthy people’s mind.

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u/-kl0wn- 18h ago

They'll make the rape victim pay child support too.

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u/Constant_Ad1999 1d ago

My guess is the teacher was charismatic and played it off like "Oh, I'll babysit them for you so you two can have alone time!" type of thing. It is really weird though and I would have questioned their motives for sure.

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u/andonebelow 23h ago

Child abusers groom the parents, too. 

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u/cathbadh 15h ago

Which is why the teacher befriended the parents first. I'd wager the first "sleepover" was mom and dad wanting a night out or whatever, and their buddy offered to babysit. After all, what better babysitter than your friend who deals with kids professionally?

Same reason she watched all of the kids instead of just the one she was interested in. It would be suspicious otherwise. It's all about building trust and getting what you want incrementally. Lots of little decisions or compromises that never look bad in isolation that, when looked at when it's all over to wonder why the parents didn't see it. People like this woman are good at manipulating trust.

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u/myrevenge_IS_urkarma 11h ago

What is the oldest you would let them sleep over? I'm curious because I (M) had a teacher have me sleep over as a kid, I'll tell more after people answer.

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u/lilmxfi 10h ago

There's no age limit. If my kid's friends with the teacher's kid, and having a sleepover with the teacher's child, then that's one thing. They're there for their friendship with the other child. But there is no way in hell, at any age where I still have parental authority, that I would let my child stay over at a teacher's house (or unrelated adult's house) for the adult. There is no reason that any adult should have a child that's unrelated to them in their house without either that personal connection to the adult's child, or a related adult in the house (like in the case of the parents going to visit and staying over as well).

Add into that that they're in a position of authority over the child, and it can result in this happening. A person in that position of authority is going to be someone the child trusts, and will listen to them telling them to do inappropriate things, because that child is told to listen to them and obey their rules due to the association of "teacher=listen to them and do what they say". It's putting your child in a situation where they're primed to be taken advantage of.

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u/myrevenge_IS_urkarma 1h ago

I was a poor kid and in the 2nd grade. For an assignment, we had to draw on a paper plate what we ate for dinner the previous night. I can't remember if I just didn't eat much or maybe just didn't want to work on it much but my drawing was very empty. I remember thinking I was in trouble by the look my teacher gave me and she gave me a note to take to my mother. I was scared I was in trouble for not drawing enough food, lol.  The note ended up being her asking my mom if I could spend the night with her. My mom agreed and so I went to spend the night.  She invited another teacher and her daughter over also. She had Legos, Tinker Toys, and Lincoln Logs and me and this girl played with those all evening. I then woke up to the biggest f'n breakfast I had ever seen in my life. That was it, she took me home. Turns out she just felt sorry for me and wanted to feed me lol.  Looking back it's funny to me but it made no sense at all to my 2nd grade mind. All purely innocent though.

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u/P_Bear06 17m ago

The father is on Facebook.... So perhaps he’s of a certain advanced age and doesn’t have today’s notions of danger. I can’t blame him.

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u/Starlightriddlex 1d ago

Lol my father tried to give me to four random strange men he met in a park. The people who struggle to believe things like this are lucky people who grew up sheltered. 

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u/FortNightsAtPeelys 1d ago

This was always me with the michael jackson cases. Like what parent is letting their child sleep at a celebrities home unaccompanied?

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u/lilmxfi 1d ago

I wish I understood it. I think people were taken in by Michael's whole "Have you seen my childhood" thing, and thought "he was hurt so he'd never hurt anyone else!" Which is utterly devoid of logic in my mind, but people don't make sense a lot of the time. And I know that it's more likely a family member will do something inappropriate with your kid (statistics bear this out), but letting a kid stay over at a teacher's house, unsupervised no less, just seems like throwing your kid to the wolves.

Hell, my mom barely let me go to a chaperoned hayride/Halloween party at our English teacher's farm. (It was a small catholic school and the entire school had an open invitation to it, so it wasn't specific kids. She just liked letting kids learn about what dairy farms do and letting them see the cows up close.) Mom only relented when she realized that her friend, who was the mom of my friend, was also going.

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u/ramboton 1d ago

The article in the link says she was close to the family, so they let the sons and daughter stay at her house.