A new anti-grooming law that may reduce the epidemic of teacher sexual abuse will be put to the test in court after Kentucky authorities arrested a middle school teacher, alleging her behavior crossed the line from inappropriate to criminal under the new statute.
The Kentucky law took effect July 15 and is a new tool available for school districts and law enforcement to stop inappropriate relationships between educators and their student before sexual abuse occurs. The law applies to any adult who is grooming a child for sexual purposes.
Police arrested Sadie M. Flores, 25, on Friday and charged with “grooming a minor,” a Class D felony under the new Kentucky law, numerous news outlets reported.
Flores was employed at the Graves County Middle School, located in the city of Mayfield, a town of about 10,000, located about 140 miles northwest of Nashville.
The allegations were first reported to Graves County school district where administrators “immediately” notified the Graves County sheriff’s office, which launched an investigation, authorities said.
“Detectives said the investigation included the seizure of electronic records, interviews and other investigative measures. Flores was interviewed Friday afternoon before being taken into custody around 3:30 p.m,” Fox News reported.
Kentucky station WPSD obtained a copy of the charging document that alleges messages between Flores and a minor student “were not to be of a legitimate purpose and were not school related.”
“The parent also identified multiple incoming phone calls that were identified as FaceTime that had occurred multiple times in the late evening hours that the parents were not aware of,” WSPD reported per that document. The two allegedly “also met in secret outside of the school.”
The county sheriff’s office further alleges in the charging document that communications by Flores “attempted to manipulate the minor and expressed feelings of love and admiration more so than just a student-teacher relationship.”
Authorities have not officially released the student’s gender or age, but one news outlet reported school officials had been contacted by the parent of “a 14-yea-old” concerning Flores’ behavior.
The New York Post reported Tuesday Flores is the married mom of an 18-month-old daughter. Photos of the couple were published by some news outlets and went viral online.
Kentucky this summer became the fifteenth state to criminalize grooming, according to a leading child advocacy group called Enough Abuse. The first to do so was Arkansas in 2013.
The alleged behavior by Flores is consistent with patterns of grooming behavior as reported by an exclusive Breitbart News investigation into “educator sexual misconduct” earlier this year.
Those experts say perpetrators, in certain cases, will not try to immediately entice their victim with sexual suggestions but instead employ emotional tactics such love and admiration before moving onto sexual abuse.
That same Breitbart investigation revealed there has been an epidemic of such cases in the past two decades, experts describing the problem as “rampant” and occurring in districts large and small, public and private, with cases popping up on a weekly basis.
The ability of teachers and students to communicate secretly via the internet has contributed to the problem, leading researchers told Breitbart, as well as a “culture of permissiveness” in schools.
The Kentucky legislation that established the new anti-grooming law not only covers educators but anyone seeking to sexually exploit a minor.
It defines grooming as “a course of conduct… intended to establish an emotional connection with a minor through manipulation, trust-building or influence to” facilitate future acts of sexual conduct or “normalize or desensitize” the minor to acts of sexual conduct.
Flores was booked into the Graves County Restricted Custody Center before later being transferred to an out-of-county detention facility.
Graves County Sheriff Jon Hayden told news outlets the investigation remains ongoing.
Breitbart contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the author of the New York Times true crime best seller House of Secrets , which documents one of the worst cases of child sex abuse in U.S. history, and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
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