Allenna Ward- Teacher Accused of Having Sex With Five Boys
By on
February 19th, 2008
Allenna Ward, 24, a teacher at Bell Street Middle School in Laurens County, South Carolina, was sent to prison for six years Tuesday for having sexual encounters with five teenage boys. Allenna Ward, 24, tearfully asked the rural community to forgive her.
“I apologize from the depths of my heart,” Ward said in court.
Ward, who is married and the daughter of a minister, allegedly had sex with 14- and 15-year-old boys at the schoolwhere she taught as well as at a motel, a park and behind a restaurant. Some of the boys were students at the school.
Some of the victims’ families attended the sentencing but did not speak during the court hearing.
“I just feel like justice has been served,” the sister of one victim said after the hearing.
Police began investigating last year after school officials found a note believed to have been written by Ward to one of the boys. Some of the victims were students at Bell Street Middle School in Clinton, where Ward taught. She was fired about a year ago.
Ward pleaded guilty in September to three counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct with a minor and three lewd acts on a minor.
Ward’s lawyer Donald Hocker cited the psychiatric testimony in asking for home imprisonment for his client. Hocker said Ward will be vulnerable to physical and emotional abuse at the hands of other prisoners.
“It’s an awful case with awful consequences, but Allenna Ward is not an awful woman,” Hocker said in court. He declined to speak to a reporter after the hearing.
Ward was sentenced to 15 years in prison for each lewd act count, but the punishments were suspended to six years. She also was sentenced to six years on each second-degree criminal sexual conduct count. The sentences are to run concurrently.
According to a page on the school’s website, which has since been deleted, Ward was the 7th grade Language Arts teacher. The same page also said she was a 2001 graduate of Clinton High School and a 2005 graduate of Presbyterian College with a Bachelor of Science in Middle School Education.
Forensic psychiatrist Donna Schwartz-Watts said Ward is not a pedophile, but rather a childlike victim suffering from personality disorders and a repressed childhood. Schwartz-Watts said the minister’s daughter lived a sheltered life but really was a “free spirit” who never got a chance to break away from her family.
Prosecutors painted Ward’s crimes in a harsher light and said she violated the trust that parents place in teachers.
Some of Ward’s former classmates are already talking about her arrest.
One former classmate, who identified himself as “JoCoWash,” had this to say:
“We knew each other well. The whole family in fact. They were all great Christian people, who I would not see doing anything wrong. One of the nicest families I have ever met… I remember when she freaked out when she heard about a teacher doing a similar thing. She wanted to be a teacher throughout high school and would always frown upon bad teachers.
“I think that fact that she is a Christian and her parents are ministers makes it even worse for her and her family… I thought I knew her well, but obviously she had deep secrets or rooted problems that needed to be resolved…”
Another former classmate, who identified himself as “Jonathan,” had a slightly different perspective on the situation.
“So why do I care? Because I went to high school with her. I was friends with her. She was the daughter of a preacher. Back then, ironically, she had a thing for older guys with low IQs, so I’m not sure what turned her on to child molestation. But I distinctly remember her disapproving of my casual attitude toward pre-marital sex, so I find her extra-marital adventures slightly horrifying, slightly ironic, and slightly amusing.”
As former friends chatted about Ward online, Koskela met with parents to discuss how the district was handling the matter and to inform them that the district would have mental health counselors available to talk to the students.
As of this writing, Allenna Williams Ward is being held at the Clinton jail on $110,000 bond. Jerry Peace, the 8th Circuit Solicitor, is expected to hear Ward’s case, which will be the third female schoolteacher or coach sex scandal that he has handled over the past year.
Popularity: 1% [?]