Ex-Kentucky high school teacher who had sex with 17-year-old student charged with rape and sodomy
BOONE COUNTY, KENTUCKY: Former Kentucky high school teacher, Mollie Verkamp, was arrested and charged for allegedly having sex with a student, 17, authorities have revealed via a press release. The 27-year-old had admitted to the cops that she had slept with a former student from a high school outside of Boone County, the Boone County Sheriff's Office shared.
The authorities had been investigating Verkamp for a year and had opened a probe into a separate claim that Verkamp had sent some sexually explicit videos to another 18-year-old student. When the police were looking into those allegations, Verkamp had allegedly revealed that she had also sent some inappropriate images to a 17-year-old student while at her previous teaching job at Walton Verona High School.
A Facebook post by the Boone County Sheriff's Office read, "At the time of her arrest and during the 2019 – 2020 school year, Mollie Verkamp was not employed with any school district. She had previously taught for three (3) years."
The authorities shared that the former teacher had also admitted to having sex with the student at her home in Boone County. On Thursday, July 9, she was charged for rape and sodomy charges. Detectives said Verkamp admitted that she knew the student was 17-years-old at the time and that her relationship with him evolved from sending and receiving messages to having sex with him at her home in Boone County.
"Mollie Verkamp was indicted by a Boone County Grand Jury and charged with one (1) count of Rape 3rd Degree – Class D Felony and one (1) count of Sodomy 3rd Degree – Class D Felony," the post added. She is presently being held at the Boone County Detention on a $10,000 bond.
Social media users slammed Verkamp and took to commenting on the post. There were also some users who felt that at the age of 17, teenagers are aware of what they are engaging with. One such user shared, "Why are you going to spend 4+ years of your life to be a teacher to just throw it away." Another user wrote, "Thank you BCSO for getting her off the streets and out of the schools. She really needs psychiatric help. I hope she gets it."
"Not that I condone her behavior but I'm sorry a seventeen-year-old boy knows exactly what he's engaging in so this is not all on her or it shouldn't be," shared a Facebook user.
We had earlier reported that another Kentucky teacher, Kendall Burk, was charged after she allegedly admitted to sleeping with a student several times. The teacher who taught biology at Grant County High School, was charged with four counts of rape and four counts of sodomy in the third-degree connection to the incident.
Recently, the Mary Kay Letourneau case had made headlines when the former Washington State teacher who was convicted of raping her grade 6 student died of cancer on July 6. Letourneau's attorney David Gehrke revealed that she was 58 at the time of her death. According to KIRO-TV, Letourneau had been teaching at the Shorewood Elementary School located in Burien when she raped her 12-year-old student in 1996.
The authorities had found the two in a minivan which was parked at the Des Moines Marina. Letourneau had tried to pass off the child's age as 18 as the two were taken to a police station, Fox News reports. At the time Letourneau was married and also a mother of four children. In 1997, she was pulled out of a teacher's meeting and was arrested. She was charged with statutory rape. She pleaded guilty to child rape and got a 3-month jail sentence and probation. She, later on, went to marry her student Vili Fualaau and even had two children with him, however, their marriage was also shortlived.