NY Teacher Gets Jail for Sex with Boy - Updated

(Hempstead, New York) Twenty-seven-year-old Heather Kennedy pleaded guilty before Judge Joseph Calabrese to five counts of third-degree rape plus other sex offenses stemming from a relationship with a 16-year-old boy.

Consequently, she was sentenced yesterday to six months in jail. Kennedy apologized to the judge.

After she was charged with a crime, she continued to rendezvous with the teenager, having sex with him at her grandparents' Bellmore home, at a mutual friend's home in Wantagh, and after Kennedy picked him up from the Massapequa train station, prosecutors said.

"Your conduct, based upon your position in society, is very serious," Calabrese said. "We certainly have to discourage it from ever happening again."

Kennedy will lose her teaching credentials and she was ordered to register as a sex offender.

[Update 3/15/09] Something doesn't make sense. Another report now says that Kennedy just completed her six months in jail and was re-arrested upon her release for allegedly sending love letters to her 16-year-old victim from jail. So, apparently she's back in jail awaiting adjudication of new charges.



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Long Island Teacher and Boy
[Previous 3/27/08 post]
(Hempstead, New York) A 25-year-old math teacher at Wantagh High School, Heather Kennedy, has been arrested for allegedly engaging in sex with a 16-year-old male student.

The boy's father alerted the police. The sexual relations allegedly occurred on March 20 in Massapequa.

Kennedy has been charged with third-degree rape and endangering the welfare of a child. She is due to be arraigned later today in First District Court in Hempstead.


[Update 7/22/08]

Heather Kennedy pleaded guilty last month to sexual misconduct and was awaiting an August sentencing. An order of protection was issued at the time to have Kennedy stay away from the 16-year-old.

But wait, circumstances have changed.

Heather Kennedy, the former Wantagh high school teacher who pleaded guilty last month to having sex with a 16-year-old student, was arrested again late Monday after she continued having sex with the boy as she awaited sentencing, prosecutors said Tuesday.

She now faces five new charges of statutory rape, District Attorney Kathleen Rice's office said.

Acting on a tip, Rice's investigators put the Massapequa woman, 25, under surveillance and found that she was still seeing the boy, and the victim later told prosecutors she had sex with him five times since the guilty plea, the prosecutors said.

Kennedy was arrested Monday night and charged with five counts of rape, two counts of criminal sexual act, five counts of criminal contempt and one count of endangering the welfare of a minor.

Arraignment is scheduled for today.

I don't imagine the court will be inclined toward leniency the second time around.