Posted on 07/28/2010 7:17:17 AM PDT by outpostinmass2
CHRISTIANSBURG -- A former Christiansburg High School teacher was charged Tuesday with having sex with one of her students during the 2008-09 school year.
Diana Eckes Canter, 34, of Christiansburg was charged with eight felony counts of taking indecent liberties with a minor -- as someone in a custodial or supervisory position having sexual intercourse with a minor. She was arrested Tuesday night and released from the Montgomery County Jail on a $5,000 bond.
Canter resigned from her job as an 11th-grade English teacher Tuesday, said Becky Hawke Wilburn, spokeswoman for the town of Christiansburg.
Canter couldn't be reached for comment Wednesday. A phone number associated with the address listed for her in court files is disconnected.
Montgomery County school system spokeswoman Brenda Drake directed all questions about the investigation to Christiansburg police. Superintendent Brenda Blackburn also declined to comment.
The offenses were reported to have occurred between December 2008 and August 2009, and the boy is no longer a student in the school system, Wilburn said. Arrest warrants filed in Montgomery County Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court show that the charges against Canter have offense dates of January, February, March and April 2009, with two charges stemming from each month.
So far, Wilburn said, the investigation indicates that none of the offenses took place on campus.
Wilburn said police began to investigate after the boy contacted the police department.
According to search warrant affidavits filed Wednesday in Montgomery County Circuit Court, the boy on Friday "made a report of a prior sexual relationship with Diana Canter, a teacher at Christiansburg High School, while he was a minor going to Christiansburg High School."
Christiansburg police obtained warrants to procure from Christiansburg High School and the Montgomery County School Board office "documents, letters, files, disciplinary actions and complaints made in reference to" Canter between August 2008 and June 2009. Assorted documents were taken from both, but court records don't specify what they are.
According to her profile page on Christiansburg High School's website, Canter taught 11th-grade English, advanced placement English and film studies. She is listed as graduating from Virginia Tech in 1998 with a bachelor's degree in English and in 2000 with a master's degree in education.
According to Montgomery County Public Schools records, Canter had been employed with the school system since 2000 and earned $45,150 annually.
On the website ratemyteacher.com, someone described Canter on July 2 as "The next teacher you'll see on the news. Wants the cute guys to drool and the lonely girls to be in her click [sic]."
However, John Beamer, president of the Christiansburg High School PTSA, said he was surprised to hear about the charges.
Both his son and daughter were in Canter's classes, and he said he never saw signs of misconduct.
"She was a good teacher, and my children enjoyed having her," he said. He recalled Canter as "very competent, and very professional," saying she was always upfront with parents during meetings.
On Canter's CHS Web page, she lists editor with Pocahontas Press as a past job. The owner of the Blacksburg-based press couldn't be reached Wednesday.
The school system requires sexual harassment training for both employees and students at least twice a year. Those trainings include topics about employee-to-employee harassment, student-to-teacher harassment and teacher-to-student harassment, Drake said.
If Canter is convicted, she faces up to five years in prison on each count.
Yeah.....I know......but it just got to me this morning...that THAT is precisely how our society is. It may have something to do with the fact that I am an educator and I am more and more disgusted with other educators who do not approach their job as a sacred trust.
Who needs to “get around the fact” - that girls get pregnant and boys don’t??
Certainly not moi...
Lessee here...if a male teacher practices safe sex or let’s say the 14 yr old girl is on the pill, etc., then if pregnancy is the issue, voila, no issue. Right, men? Have I got that right?
OK. Let’s say the female teacher is a Lesbian who has sex with the 14 yr old girl. If pregnancy is the issue, then, voila, no issue. Right?
It’s real easy, folks. These laws and rules are not about pregnancy. Pregnancy would be a terrible, complicating issue if it were to occur from one of these situations, but that’s all. These laws and rules are to protect minors under the law from sexual involvement with adults who are in custodial roles with the minors. A minister, a Sunday School teacher, a public school teacher, a camp counselor...you name the custodial role and that is what this is all about.
Final point: how would YOU like a MALE custodial figure to become sexually involved with your minor son? Sexual involvement is the issue. With a custodial figure is the issue. You would be ready to kill the perp if the teacher were male, but you want to laugh and crow and brag if the teacher who has sex with your son is female.
Utterly ridiculous.
Case closed.
A lot more of us were students rather than teachers, so it’s a lot easier to blindly focus on the benefits that the victim of this crime received, rather than the breach of trust and potential damage the criminal is responsible for.
Yeah, but IF you got a permanent disease you wouldn’t be
gloating....and neither would the ones you gave it to.
whether you decide to close the case or not, the fact that sticks is this is the very unique crime in which a guy daydreams of being the victim, and lacking any other connection to the news story (e.g. “that’s my son!”), guys are going take criminal lemons and make naughty lemonade.
20+ years ago I knew a high school coach who had a good looking sophomore student 9 years his junior in his classes. She pursued him for 3 years. On her 18th birthday he let her consummate the deal and they got married shortly after. She went to college, had kids and as far as I know they’re still married.
Because they may be decorative on the outside, but on the inside they're all loaded up with nastiness and perversity. There's something wrong with them, mentally ...
Best to stay away.
Being arrested adds a little age to your face pretty quick!
This is the risk you expose your children to when you send them to a public school...wonder how many more don’t get caught...
Keep in mind that if the teacher gets pregnant, the boy will be liable for 18 years of child support -- and back child support may be assessed when he's in his 20's or later.
Yes, I thought the difference in the 2 pics was quite striking!
She's 34, attractive, and apparently unmarried. I'm going to guess that she's one of those women who think that the adult guys who might want her, have insufficient status. It's an ego thing, where the status of the guy reflects on the woman. But meanwhile, she needs some sexual release.
Underage boys don't count in the status game, which is why the adult teachers go for them.
Yes, but the idiot juveniles on FR (who are projecting their own desires) applaud the seduction of education’s youth. Unless it’s a male doing the seducing.
She is a teacher. Just about every working man has a higher status as they all work more than 180 days a year.
Seinfeld was dumped by a girl that didn’t like his act and therefore could respect him. He exclaimed; “You’re a cashier!!!!”
Well said!!
You are confusing the modern, ie post pill, with the pre-modern. Also implicitly in that discussion is that in those days the sex would cause many to consider the girl damage goods but not such a boy. Back in the days I was discussing, the law was more concerned with trying to punish acts that create the greatest harm rather than enforce leftist ideas of PC like yours. So following the theory of greatest harm, the pecking order of issues to local law enforcement likely were
1. Male authority figures having sex with underaged males.
2. Female authority figures having sex with underaged females.
3. Male authority figures having sex with underaged females.
4. Female authority figures having sex with underaged females.
And the public and the law likely did not consider 1 and 2 as even the same type of crime as 3 and 4. 1 and 2 were viewed as different and much much worse, ie unnatural acts.
Finally in the real world where most of us operate, you closed no cases. You repeated some leftist babble some of which is good, ie girls are not dammaged goods because of their past behavior, but much of it silly equating same sex encounters with natural sexual.
No, of course not, but what teenager with a condom ever thought he wasn’t invincible at that age? I of course see things differently now at my age and as a father, but most horndog kids with a hot teacher asking for it probably would have walked a mile barefoot over broken glass at 17 to hit it.
I do believe I have never said this on one of these Naughty Teacher threads, but you've made it completely apply to me, so...
GUILTY!
No, I don't understand it, either.
As I just said in my long post I was responding to a 60 something person about how things were in their day. The courts then were likely not stupid enough to grant child support in a case like this, even if they did not treat it as seriously as sex between a male authority figure and an under aged female (as the courts do today). Also note if the woman is married, there is no child support, any child is legally her husbands responsibility.
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