MACHIAS, Maine — A former substitute school teacher at the Ella Lewis School in Steuben entered a plea of no contest Monday to two counts of gross sexual assault of an eighth-grade student at the K-8 elementary school.
Dianne L. Leach, 47, of Steuben will be sentenced at a later date.
Last April Maine State Police investigated allegations of an inappropriate relationship between the substitute teacher and a male student. RSU 24 Interim Superintendent Wayne Enman then told the Bangor Daily News that the investigation was launched when a teacher confiscated the victim’s cellphone during a class and saw a text message from Leach that raised concerns.
The complaint filed in May claims that Leach engaged in sexual acts with the student in December 2010 and in March 2011.
RSU 24 subsequently obtained a protection order against Leach requiring her to stay off all school properties.
I hope that she is sentenced the same way that a male perpetrator of this crime would be sentenced.
Yeah, right. Like that will happen.
The TV news said the state is asking for “6 months in jail and two years probation”…..Crazy….
If you See something, Say something.
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NOT for 911 use.
You mean like they did at our high school alma mater? None of those creeps ever were held accountable in any way for their repeated preying on female students.
Did we go to the same high school? If we did it seems you know things that I dont.
A long time ago we discovered that we hailed from the same area of Maine but you must have forgotten that. It doesn’t surprise me that you didn’t know that teachers were having relations with students, as it was the male teachers that were doing it and their targets were female so as a male, you were not subjected to it.
Considering the fact that a baby ate cocaine and almost died and the mother only got 90 days, maybe if Ms. Leach says “Oh PLEASE judge, I promise from here on out I’ll be the best substitute teacher I can be” she too can get a sentence that’s the equivalent to a slap on the hand.
6 months for 2 counts of gross sexual assault against a small boy (child molestation) is laughable but not at all surprising from Carletta Bassano’s DA office. This is the same assistant district attorney, Paul Cavanaugh, who recommended and got only 30 days in jail to another female child molester who admitted molesting a 13 year old boy. If this case involved even an accusation against a man, that man would railroaded in to 7-12 years in prison with a lifetime on the sex offender registry—guilty or not. This same DA office is apparently facing disciplinary actions for fabricating evidence to convict innocent men.
http://fillerfund.com/index.htm
You know why it’s always gross sexual assault? Because by the legal definition of rape, women can’t commit rape. It’s messed up and should be changed but…when’s the last time you saw a lobby group for rights for men?
If I’m not mistaken the legal definition of rape was recently changed so women can now commit it.
Rape is rape, whether it be man or woman commiting the crime, both punishments should be equal regardless of circumstances.
No, only the FBI’s statistical reporting definition of rape was changed (broadened); no law was changed.
Under Maine state law, “rape” is no longer the actual name of a crime; it was replaced about 20 years ago with the gender-neutral crime of “gross sexual assault.”
Thanks for clearing that up.
No one cares about men and no one allows funding for men’s groups or issues. In fact, the governor and the feminists who run Maine have just declared open season on all men: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzfEzXY-Erg
I am well aware of Ms. Kellet and her actions. Mr. Filler is not the only person that has been put through the wringer. There was a young high school gradute from Ellsworth that was put on trial and found not guilty of rape. That case seemed to be rather bogus as well.
There seems to have been dozens if not hundreds of innocent men and young boys that have been prosecuted by Mary Kellett. The public has a right to know why she is apparently facing disbarment and still allowed to prosecute men.
http://fillerfund.com/marykellett.htm
http://fillerfund.com/latest.htm
I think hundreds is a stretch. However there are at least three cases that I know off from memory in which men have been put on trial in which the evidence has appeared to be nearly non-existant. In addition there seem to be some vendetta cases that have been prosecuted by the DA Office in Hancock-Washington County.
Just one local attorney told BDN his office handled over two dozen bogus rape cases brought forward by this DA office. That was just one law office. And it’s not just the baseless rape cases; it’s prosecuting high school boys for criminal assault for spitting. It’s incarcerating young boys for 2 years on charges of terrorism because they sang offensive rap lyrics on their cd. It’s charging a man with domestic abuse for spilling a cold cup of coffee on his wife. It’s jailing a young man for a PFA violation because his girlfriend snuck in to his house on her own initiative against her father’s wishes. It’s driving a very depressed man to commit suicide in his jail cell with a litany of charges when checking his medication and getting him a psych-eval would have been in order. His kids will never see their father again. Many cases brought by that DA office have been mired with accusations of biased and malicious prosecution and evidence and witness tampering. Based on reading the paper alone I would not be surprised if the true unreported number of such cases did not total well over a hundred or more.
I’m curious as to the depth of background checks for substitute teachers there and in other school districts.
Substitute teachers are required by law to be fingerprinted and background checked by the Maine State Police as are regular teachers.
When it comes to this sort of thing.. You can do all the back round checks you want. You just still never know about someone when they are put in a situation around a child and have a chance to act on it… not that back round checks are a bad idea ….
True. We are all law-abiding people until we get caught breaking the law. Back ground checks show that a person may not have a criminal history but they are not a guarantee that someone will not committ a crime.
47 yrs old and setting her sights on a kid. What is wrong with this picture?
How old was the kid? 8th grade?
She was 41 last year in BDN report !!
How come no picture of her?
No pic to protect her!! What about the child she was responsible for protecting???
I remember grade school wish this was my math teacher and I . She was preeeeetttty! At least it was opposite sex for a change. Suppose she was( teaching) the young man.
Pretty creepy there timjy.
This is way it is WRONG for LePage to De fund our schools!! Obviously there is a lack of proper screening and/or evaluations of our Teachers as it is. I am NOT pointing fingers at the majority of Maine’s Wonderful teachers. But what I am saying as that just one instance like this sets teachers back across the board. More importantly our Children do not deserve to be exploited by those charged with their well being. RECALL LePAGE AT ANY COST!
I’m sure it must really be BUSH’s fault !
or Clinton..
Wow, some of you are so blinded by your hatred you see nothing else. Somehow Lepage makes into EVERY post. Your even suggesting that it’s the Governor’s fault. You have got to wake up
I continue to say that I don ‘t support Governor LePage, I just have enough sense to realize how distorted the views of many are.
This started before LePage took office.
you have done well to somehow work Lepage into a child sex story .. You need to chill and get Lepage out of your head.. It certainly isnt his fault she did this.. Im sure he had nothing to do with it. So settle down .. it will be ok
go to wabi.com her picture is there! if this was a male teacher doing
this to a female student he would of been hung up by his um… well you
know
Or nothing would have happened, even though everyone knew what was going on. This is how this worked at my high school. Several male teachers were having sexual relationships with female students year after year and some still work there. One is on the school board now for crying out loud. None were ever prosecuted.
Teachers should be held to a higher standard, even though this was a woman. It seems women get only a minor offense sentence when they are actually guilty of raping and sodomizing a student. I’m sure they ‘loved one another’ as they always seem to claim. ( ‘He initiated it” was her lawyers claim in her hearing).
6 months..
Judge, you should be ashamed!!
Well stated. When is the law going to realize that a child cannot give permission or initiate? If your a man give this excuse see if it works, not. I am still shocked that in 2012 we still don’t have laws that are not sexual bias.
what a sick person she is.
This judge had better order her to the sex offender list for the rest of her life. This is the year 2012 and we still don’t have equal laws. If your a man you get one sentence and a women gets another. The old cliche, too pretty for jail. I won’t give my opinion of anyones appearance. However, women or man; you do the crime, you do the time!
Tell me again how the Angus King law mandating fingerprinting of all teachers helps prevent this type of act.
It seems to me we have had MORE sexual abuse of students by teachers since passage of the law removing teacher’s fourth amendment protections than we had before
The dumbing down of superintendents common sense and character is what seems to have changed, other than just perception or awareness of such acts.
I’m not sure there is more abuse. In many of these cases technology is catching them. In this case the cell phone held the secret, in others it’s computers.
Double standards once again
They always say “former” teacher – when they were actually a teacher at the time.
good, bad or indifferent it seems to me that looking at the students private messges was a gross invason of privacy.