In yet another case of what experts have called “rampant” educator sexual misconduct in the U.S., a Texas substitute teacher has been arrested and charged with an “improper relationship” with a student.
The LLano County Sheriff’s Criminal Investigation Division arrested Angela Palmares, 27, Wednesday and charged the substitute with “improper relationship between an educator and student,” a second-degree felony.
Palmares did her substitute teaching in the Llano Independent School District located about 75 miles northwest of Austin in the town of Llano, which has a population of only 3500 residents. The school district serves 2,000 students from the town and surrounding areas.
Upon receiving the report of her arrest, the school district “immediately removed the substitute teacher from its list of available substitutes,” according to a statement by the sheriff’s office.
The teacher came under scrutiny after school officials notified police about “inappropriate communication with students, specifically through a social media platform outside of the school day,” Mac Edwards, superintendent of Llano Independent School District, said in a letter to families.
Neither the sheriff’s office nor the school district shared details about the communication, what grades she was teaching, or the age or gender of her alleged victim.
“The district takes all allegations of this nature extremely seriously and remains committed to providing a safe and supportive environment to students,” the superintendent wrote.
“At this time, we are unable to provide additional details due to personnel and student privacy considerations,” he added.
Palmares is being held on $150,000 bond, the New York Post reported based on jail records.
As Breitbart News reported in an exclusive investigation last month, incidents of educator sexual misconduct with students have been generating headlines on a weekly basis, such cases described by leading researchers as “rampant” in the United States in the past two decades.
Breitbart’s report found cases occurring in school districts large and small, ranging from small town public schools to elite academies in large cities.
Also, while reports involving young attractive female teachers like Palmares generate salacious headlines and the lion’s share of national coverage, male perpetrators actually account for nine out of ten sexual misconduct cases with vulnerable students.
Leading researchers cite a culture of permissiveness, reluctance to report fellow teachers, and often secret educator-student contact through the internet as among the contributing factors in teacher sexual abuse of students.
One researcher called the problem “100 times worse” than the highly publicized sex scandal that hit the Catholic church in past decades.
Award-winning crime writer 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.
