An Arizona teacher has been arrested for harboring and sexually assaulting a runaway girl, the latest example of a horrifying nationwide phenomenon of child abuse by educators.
Robin Rogers, 44, was arrested July 11 and charged with sexual conduct with a minor, making a false report to police, hindering prosecution and three counts of possession of drugs and drug paraphernalia.
Rogers reportedly taught life skills and child development at Telesis Preparatory School, a public charter school in Lake Havasu, Arizona, where she also served as the cheerleading coach. After his arrest, the school released a statement saying he was no longer employed there.
The 17-year-old boy she allegedly concealed and had a sexual relationship with has been reported missing since Valentine’s Day.
Investigators had been watching Rogers’ home for months, following leads about the boy, according to the complaint. On July 11, around 3 p.m., officers went to her house to inquire about the boy’s whereabouts and saw him fleeing out the back of the house. After a short foot pursuit, the boy was taken into custody.
After further investigation, Rogers was arrested and charged. She is currently being held on $30,000 bail.
This incident is just the latest in a tragically long line of despicable acts committed by educators against children.
As The Lion reported last year, Chicago Public Schools investigated more than 600 cases of “adult-directed student” misconduct in 2022 alone, on top of the roughly 300 cases it investigated the previous year.
The 600 reports included 81 incidents of sexual contact, 35 incidents of grooming, 33 incidents of sexual abuse, 26 incidents involving sexual acts, 25 incidents of “sexual remarks in person” and 14 incidents of “sexual electronic communications.”
LION magazine also reported on several other shocking cases, including:
An “award-winning Kansas teacher” has been charged with sexually assaulting multiple students. A Michigan teacher has been charged with blindfolding and sexually assaulting a student during an eye exam. An elementary school teacher in North Carolina has been charged with 40 counts of sexual assault. A fourth-grade teacher in Tennessee has been charged with “23 counts of allegedly abusing five boys between the ages of 12 and 17.” A California teacher “allegedly sexually abused eight girls, the youngest of whom was six years old.” Two Georgia school employees have been “charged with having sexual intercourse with students in a Georgia school district in 2021 and 2022.”
In fact, the scale and scope of this problem is so great that it has even caught the attention of the federal government.
In June 2022, the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) released a report titled, “A Study of State Policies to Prohibit Aiding and Abusing Sexual Misconduct in Schools.”
Specifically, the Department of Education examined state laws to determine what restrictions were in place to prevent an offender from “quietly leaving a position where he or she could sexually abuse a child in another school district.”
The study concluded that fewer than a dozen states have laws “requiring disclosure to job applicants of information about investigations or disciplinary actions related to sexual crimes or abuse.”
The last Department for Education report to look at the scale of the problem of sexual misconduct by teachers against students was in 2004, when it found that 10% of students had been targeted “at some point during their time at school”.
