Tampa Teacher Ethel Anderson Convicted of 9 Counts of Lewd Acts on 12 Year Old Student
We will never understand why men and women as role models would stoop so low as to sexually take advantage of a child. What kind of psychological evaluations did this teacher have before getting hired? Or did she at all
A jury has convicted a former Mango Elementary school teacher of performing sex acts on a 12-year-old former student.
Ethel Anderson was convicted on all nine counts of lewd and lascivious behavior.
Prosecutors say Anderson
had oral sex and other sexual contact with the boy, whom she tutored on Saturdays at her Riverview home in 2011 and early last year a home she shared with her husband and kids.
"We would make out, tongue kiss," the victim says in testimony during
the trial on Tuesday. 10 News is not identifying the victim, who is now
14 years old.
"The story is remarkable. Not true, it didn't happen," says
Anderson's attorney Will Knight. During closing arguments, Knight tells
the jury the victim made up the story.
"Because he's angry, he's been told he's failing. Does he want to be a 13-year-old in 5
th grade? Right after that is when he made the allegations."
But in the end, prosecutor Rita Peters convinced jurors that more
than 230 explicit texts Anderson admits to sending the boy backs up his
story.
