Two Bountiful Junior High School teachers are accused of sexually assaulting the same 13-year-old student, after their separate relationships with him spiraled from personal conversations to the exchange of sexual text messages and phone sex, authorities said.
On Friday, the Davis County Attorney’s Office filed first-degree felony charges of rape and sodomy on a child against Linda R. Nef, 46, and Valynne Bowers, 39.
Nef, a Utah studies teacher and cheerleading adviser, and Bowers, who teaches math, each confessed to having sex with the student, said Bountiful Police Lt. Randy Pickett. Until recently, the two teachers did not know about each other’s relationship with the same boy, Pickett said.

Linda Nef

The charges were filed after Nef arranged a meeting with police on Thursday and admitted having sex with the boy for more than a year, Pickett said. Their sexual relationship allegedly began in October 2007 and lasted until December 2008, he said.
During the meeting, Nef revealed Bowers’ relationship with the boy, Pickett said. Bowers allegedly began having sex with him in December, and she also has acknowledged the relationship, he said.
Nef was booked into the Davis County Jail on Friday afternoon and has her first court appearance scheduled for 1:30 p.m. March 27.
Bowers also was arrested and booked into the jail on Friday, Pickett said. She later appeared in court, where she waived her right to a preliminary hearing and was ordered to stand trial. A felony arraignment in her case is scheduled for 9 a.m. March 16.

Valynne Bowers

Nef, who began her career with the Davis County School District in 2004 as a physical education teacher at Taylor Elementary School, resigned from her post at the junior high on Monday, said school district spokesman Chris Williams.
Bowers was placed on administrative leave while district officials conduct their own investigation. Bowers has taught in the district since 1996 and was an elementary school teacher for nine years before she transferred to Bountiful Junior High in 2006, Williams said.
“So far, there is nothing to indicate that there are any other students involved, or any other faculty or employees involved,” Pickett said.
In separate conversations, the boy and the two teachers began discussing personal problems, Pickett said. That led to text messages, including ones involving sexual matters, then phone sex and the alleged sexual assaults, Pickett said.
The investigation so far indicates none of the alleged sex acts occurred at the school, Pickett said. Instead, the teachers allegedly went with the student to homes, parking lots or parks in Bountiful, Woods Cross, Farmington and Kaysville.
Williams said parents picking up their children from the school Friday expressed disbelief and shock. Jenifer Wright, whose eighth-grade daughter attends the school, said the news alarmed her.
“It makes me very worried. I’m very protective about my children,” she said.
Holly Ruhr, whose seventh-grade daughter attends the school, said she is not worried by the charges because she has been “impressed in every way” by Bountiful Junior High.
“My daughter is thrilled to go to class every day,” she said. “This is just a case of one or two teachers. Not a bad school.”
Another parent struggled to believe the allegations, defending Bowers as a great teacher.
Recent cases
Since 2007, at least 10 other Utah teachers or school employees have been charged with engaging in sexual acts with students. Among recent cases:
In November 2007, Frank Laine Hall, 37, was sentenced to prison for molesting 11 of his first-grade students at Rosamond Elementary School in Riverton.
Also in 2007, former West High School guidance counselor Marco R. Herrera, 53, received three consecutive one-to-15 year prison terms for engaging in sexual acts with a 14-year-old girl at least 10 times. An honors teacher at the same school was charged in 2008 with multiple counts of having sex with the same girl; his case is pending.

Can listening to sexually aggressive lyrics prompt teenagers to have sex at an earlier age?

That’s the issue raised by a new study, and it could unleash a fierce debate over whether a teen’s music player is potentially risky and — if so — what should or can be done about it.

In an unusual piece of research, investigators at the University of Pittsburgh graded the sexual aggressiveness of lyrics, using songs by popular artists on the US Billboard chart.

The lyrics were graded from the least to the most sexually degrading.

They then asked 711 students aged 15 to 16 at three local high schools about their music preferences and their sexual behaviour.

Overall, 31 percent of the teens had had intercourse.

But the rate was only 20.6 percent among those who had been least exposed to sexually degrading lyrics but 44.6 percent among those highly exposed to the most degrading lyrics.

The study’s lead author, Brian Primack, said music by itself was not the direct spark for sex but helped mould perception and was thus “likely to be a factor” in sexual development.

“These lyrics frequently portray aggressive males subduing submissive females, which may lead adolescents to incorporate this ’script’ for sexual experience into their world view,” he told AFP.

The study took social factors, educational attainment and ethnicity into account.

“Non-degrading” lyrics described sex in a non-specific way and as a mutually consensual act, while “degrading” lyrics described sexual acts as a purely physical, graphic and dominant act.

“Lyrics describing degrading sex tend to portray sex as expected, direct and uncomplicated,” said the paper, which appeared last week in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

“Such descriptions may offer scripts that adolescents feel compelled to play out, whether they are cast in the role of either the female or the male partner.”

Steven Martino, author of a study published in 2000 that also made the same association between music and sexual behaviour, said the findings were a wakeup call.

“The need [is] for parents to be aware so that they can place limits and criticise and understand what their children are listening to,” said Martino, a behavioural scientist in Pittsburgh with the Rand Corporation.

More than 750,000 American teenagers become pregnant each year, giving the United States one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancies in the rich world, according to figures quoted in the study. Nearly a quarter of all female teenagers in the United States have a sexually-transmitted disease.

Nearly a quarter of a century ago, lyrics by Prince on his album “Purple Rain” prompted wives of senior politicians in Washington, led by Tipper Gore, to set up the Parents Music Resource Center.

They pushed for the music industry to develop guidelines and a rating system for lyrics, similar to the ratings for movies. The system was criticised by many as unworkable and counter-productive, making it more daring for teens to buy songs they deemed taboo.

“Government needs to help parents to regulate the industry,” said Helen Ward, president of the Kids First Parents Association of Canada.

Today’s technology means it is “physically impossible” for parents to monitor what their children listened to or watched on their MP3, she said.

But Raymond MacDonald, a specialist in music psychology at Glasgow Caledonian University, described it as “a perennial debate that cropped up with artists like Frankie Goes to Hollywood, the Sex Pistols and Elvis Presley before that.”

“Do we really need a solution to the problem?”, he asked.

MacDonald said that even if every generation rehashes the discussion differently, there’s an important difference today: age lines have blurred and now everyone is listening to everything.

“Maybe we should do a study to see if the music has as a bad influence on grandparents,” he said wryly.

A video showing a King County Sheriff’s deputy pummeling a 15-year-old girl in a holding cell was released Friday over the strenuous objections of the officer’s attorney.

The case goes beyond police misconduct, County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg said in a prepared statement.

“It’s about criminal misconduct. And that’s why he needs to be prosecuted,” he said.

The video of the Nov. 29 incident was disclosed Friday, one day after Deputy Paul Schene, 31, pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor assault in King County District Court.

Schene, an eight-year veteran, works out of Precinct 4, which covers SeaTac, Burien and high crime areas in White Center and Skyway.

He is the third sheriff’s deputy since 2006 to face charges on allegations of excessive force. All three are from the Burien precinct.

A detective assigned to the girl’s case discovered the video Dec. 1 and immediately forwarded it to supervisors.

The Seattle P-I requested a copy of the holding cell video and all reports from the incident under the state’s open records law. A judge on Thursday denied a request from Schene’s attorney to bar the video from public disclosure.

“We take this very seriously and we’re very concerned about this,” sheriff’s Sgt. Jim Laing said Friday. An internal investigation would begin after the criminal case is finished.

The girl was arrested after she was caught in her parents’ car, which had been reported stolen from her parents’ Tukwila home. Deputy Travis Brunner spotted the car driving without headlights about 3:45 a.m. on 32nd Avenue South in SeaTac and pulled it over.

She and another 15-yearold girl were arrested and taken to SeaTac City Hall to be fingerprinted before being transported to the youth detention center.

The P-I is not naming the girl because she is a minor.

The deputies apparently didn’t know until later that the girl, who was in the passenger seat, was related to the car’s owner.

“We had argued strenuously that the videotape released to the media this morning not be released because it does not tell the whole story of the incident,” attorney Anne Bremner said in a statement.

“As we argued to the judge, it will inflame public opinion and will severely impact the deputy’s right to a fair trial.”

The video shows Schene and Brunner as they escorted the girl into the holding cell. Schene had asked her to remove her basketball shoes, and, as she slipped out of her left shoe, she appeared to kick it at Schene.

Schene then lunged through the door and kicked her, striking either her stomach or upper thigh area, court documents say. He pushed her against a corner wall before flinging her to the floor by her hair. He then squatted down on her and made “two overhead strikes,” although it’s unclear where the blows landed.

The detective who reviewed the video said it appeared Schene and Brunner had the girl under control when Schene struck her. Schene, who is 6 feet 2 and weighs 195 pounds, did not explain his action to investigators, court documents say.

He and the girl exchanged words. Brunner said she was “real lippy” after being informed she was under arrest and called them “fat pigs.”

The Sheriff’s Office policy manual says deputies should use physical or deadly force only when “necessary to effect an arrest, to defend themselves or others from violence, or to otherwise accomplish police duties according to law.”

Schene could face up to a year in jail if convicted. He has been on administrative leave since early December.

The girl said that she couldn’t breathe after the incident, prompting the deputies to call paramedics.

Paramedics decided that she didn’t require hospitalization. Felony charges require proof of serious injury.

“If the matter were to go to trial, he could face additional charges,” said Ian Goodhew, deputy chief of staff in the Prosecutor’s Office.

In his own report from the incident, Schene wrote that the shoe hit him in the right shin, “causing injury and pain.” He wrote that he “placed” her into handcuffs and that she needed medical attention for a “panic attack.”

He said a “blood filled pocket” formed on his shin, requiring treatment at Auburn General Hospital, according to his report. The video, however, appears to show his shin strike a metal toilet as he pushes the girl against the wall.

The girl told investigators that she didn’t intend for the shoe to hit him, court documents say.

Schene had previously been in the news in 2006 after he fatally shot Pedro Jo, a mentally ill man, during a struggle after a traffic stop on Interstate 5. It was the second officer-involved shooting of his career.

An inquest jury ruled the shooting was justified. Jo viciously attacked Schene, trying to strangle him with his own radio cord.

Jo then ran back to his car and disobeyed Schene’s orders to stop. Schene said he saw Jo reach for something in the seat, so Schene fired 11 times after Jo ran back to his car.

Shortly after the shooting while on administrative leave, Schene was stopped for driving under the influence.

He had been drinking and taking prescription medication, according to court records. He received a deferred sentence and was placed on probation, records show.

Schene works in an urban precinct with higher rates of violent crime and gang activity than other precincts. Officers assigned there more often report having to use physical force in arrest situations, Laing said.

Schene is the second officer from the precinct in three months to face charges. In addition, a third deputy, Brian Bonnar, was acquitted in January of civil rights violations during a trial in U.S. District Court. Bonnar, who patrolled in the precinct, was accused by other deputies of using excessive force on a woman who’d been restrained after a high-speed pursuit.

Legal costs for Bonnar’s private attorneys, David Allen and Todd Maybrown, as well as lawyer costs for other deputies involved, cost the county’s insurer $315,000, according to records the P-I obtained.

In December, Deputy Don Griffee was charged with misdemeanor assault for allegedly punching a handcuffed male suspect. The state Attorney General’s Office is prosecuting the case.

So, who’s right? Go with the kids: They’re the ones with the TVs in their bedrooms. And, as in most things, possession is nine-tenths of the law … of the household.

The latest survey from the Menlo Park-based foundation shows that parents remain worried about the violence and sex that pervade the media. Two-thirds of those responding say they want Congress to pass regulations limiting sex and violence on prime-time TV.

But contrary to what they claim, most parents have long ago given up trying to monitor what their kids watch. They threw in the towel when they bought kids their own sets and let them watch PG-13 videos at age 5.

In the Kaiser survey of 1,008 parents of children from 2 to 17, 52 percent said there is a TV in a child’s bedroom. A Nickelodeon survey put the figure at 69 percent for children 6 to 14. And, to our astonishment, another survey this year found that nearly one-fifth of American newborns to 2-year-olds have television in their rooms – even though the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that these children not watch any TV at all.

It’s not as if parents are relying on technologies to patrol the airwaves for them. Most parents have never heard of the V-chip, a technology that has been in new TVs since 2000 that enables parents to block shows they consider inappropriate. Only one out of six parents have ever used it. And though most parents are aware of the TV program ratings system, few know what the various initials, such as FV (fantasy violence), stand for.

Aside from the issue of what kids watch, there’s a consensus among physicians and educators that children who watch more than an hour or two of TV per day – or spend too much time with their Gameboy or video games – run a higher risk of obesity, and they do more poorly in school. And now that it’s summer, it’s time that they could be building a playhouse, learning how to cook or riding a bicycle in the neighborhood. Now, there’s a novel idea!

Parents know they should limit what kids see and how much they watch. The first step – admittedly, a hard one – is to pull the cord in their child’s bedroom.

[via Mercury News]

Deputies in Douglas County said the teenager’s father called them Sunday with the story.

The teen, 17, from Winchester Bay, first shut the younger boy in a utility box on the front of a trailer, but two companions of the teenager let him out.

Then, according to the sheriff’s office report, the 9-year-old yelled at the teenager — who then carried him to a nearby tree, wrapped several layers of tape around him, and took a cell-phone photograph.

The teen’s father arrived, and the teen took the tape off, the report said, but the father called officers with a report.

Via [Seattle Times]

That’s the deal Colorado Springs police say a 35-yearold man working at a piercing shop offered to teenage girls as young as 14.

Reports of sexual assaults on at least two underage girls led to the arrest Thursday of Michael Miller of Denver after a two-year investigation.

“We are assuming there are a whole lot more victims out there,” said detective Clay Blackwell of the Colorado Springs Police Department’s Internet Crimes Against Children Unit.

Police are seeking other possible victims or parents who suspect their child received an illegal piercing from Miller, who has a large raised star on his forehead.

Blackwell said Miller worked at Eternal 7s Tattoo and Piercing, a shop formerly at 5927 N. Academy Blvd., where he was known as “Iguana Mike.”

According to the arrest affidavit, the investigation began in April 2005 when a student reported a sexual assault to to a Doherty High School police resource officer.

The student said Miller told teenage girls, some 14 and 15 years old, that they could get their piercings free and without parental consent if they had sex with him.

She said an underage friend at Lewis Palmer High School told her she had “messed around with Mike” for piercings.

Another girl said she was 15 when she met Miller through MySpace.com.

He used the screen name “iguanamike2” in instant-message conversations, police said.

She told police he picked her up from a group meeting at New Life Church and drove her to the shop. She told police she refused his request that she perform oral sex on him.

She said he forced her to have anal sex for 30 minutes, then acted as though “nothing had happened” and “calmly” pierced her tongue.

The warrant states the shop closed in October 2005.

The owner was not charged, Blackwell said. “He didn’t know anything about it,” Blackwell said. “It wasn’t related to the shop, but he (Miller) was sneaking them in after hours.”

Blackwell said the case took two years because of a lack of reliable information about Miller, who moved to the Denver area.

“Initially, there wasn’t enough to be able to identify him — all we had was ‘Mike.’ We couldn’t proceed,” he said.

Blackwell said a recent girl’s account was “more astute,” and a warrant was issued on April 20 for Miller.

Miller is in El Paso County jail on felony charges of suspicion of inducement of child prostitution, sexual assault and unlawful sexual contact. Bail was set at $25,000.

via [The Gazette]

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