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Substitute Teacher Jailed: Justice or RailRoaded By School District? (1818 hits)


A Franklin County judge criticized Columbus City Schools on Wednesday for putting Spanish-language classes at East High School in the hands of a long-term substitute who didn’t know Spanish and showed students a movie containing graphic s*x and violence.

“This is what happens when you put a teacher in a class that she cannot teach,” Common Pleas Judge Charles A. Schneider said before sentencing the former substitute to 90 days in jail.

“They put a permanent substitute in a high-school Spanish class who can’t speak Spanish at all. Here we are, with the Columbus public schools telling us what wonderful things (they) are doing.”

Sheila Kearns, 58, was convicted in January of four counts of disseminating matter harmful to juveniles, all low-level felony offenses. Schneider placed her on probation for three years but made the jail time a condition of her probation.

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He ordered her to report to the county jail on April 10 but said he will delay the sentence if she appeals her conviction, which her attorney said she plans to do.

Kearns, of Miller Avenue on the South Side, told police she showed the movie The ABCs of Death to her classes on April 11, 2013, without reviewing it in advance. She told a detective she had her back to the screen and never turned around to watch the movie as it played for five separate classes throughout the day.

Schneider told Kearns on Wednesday that her claim is “unconscionable. There’s no way you’ll persuade me that’s what happened.”

Two of the students who saw the movie testified. The judge said he was “shocked and disappointed” that other parents refused to let their children testify.

“That was wrong,” he said. “The community has to take responsibility.”

No parents or students attended the sentencing hearing.

A district spokesman told The Dispatch after Kearns’ conviction that foreign-language substitute teachers are scarce and the school “was unable to find anyone who could teach the language at that time.”

Kearns, who did not testify at her trial, apologized during Wednesday's hearing. “I do love children,” she said. “I am sorry. I should have watched the movie.”

Rather than answering questions after the hearing, Kearns handed a reporter a handwritten statement that praised God and included a Bible quote from Galatians: “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”

Assistant County Prosecutor Kacey Chappelear told the judge that Kearns has yet to grasp the seriousness of her actions and that her attitude about the allegations has been dismissive.

Kearns’ attorney, Geoffrey Oglesby, insisted that she is sorry and said he saw “disgust and remorse” on her face as she watched the movie during the trial.

To be guilty of disseminating matter harmful to juveniles, a person must do so “with knowledge of the content,” state law says. The jury acquitted her of the first count, determining that she might not have been aware of the content while showing the movie to the first class, but convicted her for each subsequent showing.

The ABCs of Death, which isn’t rated, consists of 26 chapters, one for each letter of the alphabet and each depicting a bizarre or grisly death. Some of the chapters also contain full-frontal ****** and s*x acts.

 

The school district fired Kearns in June 2013. The Ohio Department of Education permanently revoked her substitute-teaching license after her conviction.

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/03/04/Subsitute-teacher-who-showed-violent-movie-sentenced.html

 

 

 

 

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A former substitute teacher convicted of showing a movie including graphic s*x and violence to a high school class was sentenced on Wednesday to 90 days in jail.

Sheila Kearns, who was convicted in January of four felony counts, apologized in court, saying she hadn’t watched the movie before showing it to her Spanish classes at Columbus’ East High School in April 2013. The movie, “The ABCs of Death,” consists of 26 chapters,
each depicting some form of grisly death and representing a letter of the alphabet, such as “E is for Exterminate,” ”O is for Orgasm” and “T is for Toilet.”

Kearns, who showed the movie during five periods of the class, was convicted of disseminating matter harmful to juveniles. The Columbus Dispatch(http://bit.ly/1M7CFUc) reported the judge placed her on probation for three years but made the jail time a condition of probation.

 

http://blackamericaweb.com/2015/03/05/teacher-jailed-for-showing-high-school-class-s*xually-explicit-movie/?omcamp=es-baw-nl&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=BAW%20Subscribers%20%28Weekly%29&utm_campaign=2015-05-03%20-%20BAW%20Weekly

 

 

 

 

Posted By: Jeni Fa
Thursday, March 5th 2015 at 2:52PM
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