Married Florida teacher had unprotected sex with student, 17, in classroom after grooming him with sexual texts
NAVARRE, FLORIDA: A married high school teacher has been arrested for allegedly having sex with one of her students last summer. Meghan Mary Rodriguez allegedly had intercourse with the 17-year-old student, whose name has not been released, in a classroom after football practice.
According to reports, Rodriguez initially started the relationship with the teen boy through platonic text messages, however, it eventually turned sexual, leading to a sexual encounter last summer in the classroom at Navarre High School. Sometime later after the alleged sex, the student told his parents about it because he was worried “she would fail him” after he regretted the encounter. The student alleged that he had unprotected vaginal sex with the 37-year-old teacher in 2019 because she told him she was infertile.
The case came to the notice of the Santa Rosa Sheriff's Department after they received an anonymous tip on March 3 this year. When an investigator from the Sheriff’s department reportedly confronted Rodriguez the same day in school, she told him she “needed an attorney”. However, when the investigator was leaving the school campus, Rodriguez called the person back to the principal's office and asked what might happen next, the arrest report stated.
“Meghan asked me what was going to happen next. I explained to her I still had an investigation to conduct and at the conclusion of my investigation, she could have a warrant for her arrest. She then asked me what the less extreme outcome could be. I told her the less extreme is nothing happens. Meghan then asked me if there was a middle ground,” the investigator mentioned in the report.
Reportedly, the same day when Rodriguez was confronted by the investigator, she told a school administrator that she did not have sex with the student but admitted they kissed. On March 4, Rodriguez’s husband was interviewed by police, who told them he had seen a message on his wife's phone from the student, in which he referred to her as a “cute teacher”. The husband also said that when he saw his wife texting the student, he did not think it was appropriate.
Detectives also interviewed the student on April 28 during which the teen said Rodriguez was getting excessively involved in his personal life and favored him among the other students. Continuing further, the victim alleged his tension increased when during a trip to Orlando, Rodriguez told him another teacher, identified as Suzanne Wilcox, did not like him because she knew he had hurt Rodriguez's feelings and knew about their relationship.
The teen boy also claimed that Rodriguez was so furious and frustrated at him that she asked six people from a hotel room to leave so that they could talk for 15 minutes about his feelings for her. The student admitted to the investigators that he told Rodriguez he had no feelings for her, which prompted her to bring up their sexual encounter last summer into the conversation. She also allegedly asked the student if he thought she was a “slut”. The victim later told his parents because he was afraid “she would fail him”.
The arrest report said the student maintained that Rodriguez initiated the encounter. “(The student) insisted that this only occurred once and he regretted it afterwards,” it added. Meanwhile, reports said that the accused teacher left her job at the school on May 28. “It was under investigation, and she chose to leave our employment,” Connie Carnley, the school district's assistant superintendent for human resources said. Rodriguez has been taken into custody on the second-degree felony charge of sexual assault on a minor on June 11. After an arraignment last week, she is being held in the Santa Rosa County Jail without bond.