Teacher Allenna Ward Sentenced for Sex with Students

Allenna Ward stood before a judge in a South Carolina courtroom on Tuesday, February 19, and said she apologized from the depths of her heart. Ward was then sentenced to fifteen years for each lewd act count against her. This was reduced to six years. She also received six years for each second-degree criminal sexual conduct count, which are to be served concurrently.

Allenna Ward is a married teacher. The 24-year-old not only taught school at Bell Street Middle School in Clinton, South Carolina, she was having sex with several of the 14 and 15-year-old boys that attended school there -- and some who did not. At least five of them. She met them at school, in parks, behind a restaurant, in motel rooms.

Allenna Ward was investigated after police were given a note that Ward had written that contained inappropriate language. The charges against her, three counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct with a minor and three lewd acts on a minor, stemmed from that investigation and spanned a three month time period. Ward was fired from her teaching position on February 28 last year. She pleaded guilty in September.

Citing the testimony of forensic psychiatrist Donna Schwartz-Watts, Ward's lawyer had asked for home incarceration, fearing physical and emotional abuse from other inmates in a prison setting. However, the sentence places Ward in prison.

The psychiatrist had testified that Ward was not a pedophile, despite her actions. The psychiatrist said that Ward was suffering from a repressed childhood and personality disorders. Schwartz-Watts called Ward a "free spirit" that had led a sheltered life in the household of her minister father.

Many of the victims' families attended the sentencing, seeking justice against a person they believed had abused their position of authority.

And Allenna Ward did abuse her position of authority. With reckless disregard, she abandoned the ethical principles that govern a teaching professional's life. As a person of authority, Ward used her position to compromise her relationship with those she is supposed to guide and protect, leading them into situations (sexual) and places (motel rooms and parked cars) she had no right to lead them.

The forensic psychiatrist's expert testimony aside, Ward was not incapacitated to the point of momentary or even total insanity. She was not incapacitated to the point of not knowing right from wrong. Regardless of whether or not she had a disorder, Ward made conscious decisions to have sex with minors, taking to extreme the "no touching" rule that divides teachers from students.

In addition to the physical impropriety involved, Ward abused her trust, not only of the students but also of the parents. In her position as teacher, Ward was a person to go to, a person to confide in, a person to guide, a person to teach. And she may have been all those things, but she was also a person that took those aspects of a trusting relationship and used them to develop relationships that exploited the immaturity of her students. She took advantage of a special bond, one of teacher and student, and in so doing, violated the caretaker trust the parents expected her to keep.

Boundaries are necessary in the school environment. Students will test them; it is their time. Teaching professionals must maintain standards that guide the lives of these young people, therefore enforcing the boundaries. It is a training ground for their later lives. Without those boundaries or the dissolution in some manner of the boundaries by either or both parties involved and the respective roles of those involved become suspect.

Lastly, Ward broke the law. Her crossing of the legal lines, given her position and her educational training, make her actions reprehensible. It is difficult to believe that she acted in an altered state of mind, albeit a good legal defense.

Allenna Ward was a teacher in violation of her teaching principles and the professional ethical standards by which teachers perform their jobs. By allowing herself to have relationships with her students that went outside professional standards of conduct, Ward literally destroyed legal, physical, sexual, psychological, and emotional boundaries that no teacher should ever allow themselves near.

Sources:

Associated Press, "S.C. Teacher Sentenced to 6 Years for Sex Acts With 5 Boys," FoxNews.com