Laura Lynn Cross, a former high school teacher in Ohio, has been arrested on sexual battery charges after she gave birth to the baby of a 17-year old student.
The 36-year old Cross didn’t merely sleep with the unnamed pupil, either.
According to WEWS and other news outlets, the ex-educator starting “grooming” the then-14-year old to be a potential baby daddy back when she first started sleeping with him in 2013.
The sexual relationship between Cross and this young man is said to have taken place between August 1, 2013 through September 6, 2016.
A few months before it started, the boy’s father approached authorities with concern over how close his son had grown to his teacher.
But no action was taken at that time.
Cross quit her job as an English teacher at Buchtel High School in Akron in January of 2015.
Back when the boy was in eighth grade, Cross invited him to go swimming in her pool before he later starting staying the night in her home.
Cross eventually convinced the pupil’s mother to permit her son move into her house in a court-approved “partial parental custody” arrangement.
She reportedly convinced the mother, who had custody of the teenager, that she could “mentor” the boy.
Cross gave birth to her baby in 2015, but managed to keep the child a secret until the boy’s father learned of the toddler and alerted police officers.
She has since been arrested and charged with three counts of sexual battery and is prison on $ 100,000 bond.
“It was a straight failure from the system. From the school and the police, definitely,” the boy’s father told local TV channel News 5 Cleveland.
He added:
“She had a hold on my son and [the police] told me he’s not co-operating with us so we no can do nothing with it…
“She’s a school teacher. To get aroused by a child, basically, you have to be a sick individual.”
The Akron school system says officials are “doing our [their] own internal investigation going back to 2012 to determine what exactly happened and when it happened.”
Well, we think we know what happened. We did learn our birds and our bees back in the day.
But when it happened and whether Cross violated any laws?
We’ll let the authorities straighten all of that out.
