Kelly Sweet: Another Teacher Behaving Badly?

UPDATE, May 5, 2009: Family Files Suit Against School District, Teacher
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UPDATE, August 26, 2008: Former teacher sentenced in sex case

Former St. Francis math teacher Kelly Marie Sweet pleaded guilty today to having sexual contact with a 14-year-old student. She was sentenced to serve 25 days in jail and placed on two years of probation.

Sweet, 27, has also permanently relinquished her Wisconsin teaching license. She was ordered to register as a sex offender for the duration of her probation.

"You were in position to protect and guide, to keep your students safe," Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Patricia McMahon told Sweet. "Not assault them."

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Kelly M. Sweet

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Kelly M. Sweet, 26, of Milwaukee is charged with one count of second-degree sexual assault of a child, a felony.

Sweet was an eighth-grade teacher at Deer Creek Intermediate School, according to the school's Web site.

According to a criminal complaint, the boy was sitting on a sofa watching a movie at Sweet's apartment March 9 while Sweet, who was lying on the sofa, rested her head on his lap. She began kissing him and initiated sexual contact, the complaint says.

The boy told investigators that he knew Sweet, but it was not clear from the complaint whether he was her student.

According to WISN:

Kelly Sweet, 26, taught eighth-grade math for the past four years at Deer Creek and was the girls' volleyball coach.

The 14-year-old student told Milwaukee police that he and Sweet had sexual contact earlier this month in her downtown Milwaukee apartment while watching movies on her couch.

She has been suspended by the school district and has been ordered not to have contact with the boy while she is free on bail.

The boy told investigators that "he knew Sweet."

Well, that makes sense. The boy says he was in Sweet's downtown apartment watching movies on her couch. Usually when that's happening, there's at least a degree of familiarity.

If what the boy says actually did occur, Sweet will join a rather lengthy list of disgraced teachers and coaches from southeast Wisconsin.

I wouldn't call it an epidemic, but there does seem to be a relatively large outbreak of teachers and coaches becoming involved with their students. For each case that surfaces, I wonder how many others go unreported.

In any event, it's creepy.

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Read the Criminal complaint.