Married Teacher Who Repeatedly Had Sex With Student Gets No Jail Time

a married New York teacher and mother of three was charged with abusing a teenager but instead of spending time Behind Bars she managed to walk away with no prison time at all we're breaking down her Twisted messages this sorted history and how she managed to get such leniency all with Predator catcher Chris Hansen and attorney Brian Claypool welcome to sidebar presented by lawen crime I'm Jesse Weber over the past several months we reported on multiple female teachers and Educators accused of taking advantage of their proximity and power over their students coercing them into sexual relations it seemed like week after week we were covering one of these stories but the latest case making headlines is that of 33-year-old Melissa renzes out in New York and I tell you right now this is a different one to say the least so prosecutors and queens say that she raped a 14-year-old boy on a regular basis for for a year according to the Queens County District Attorney's Office Ren was charged in August of 2023 with rape in the second and third degrees criminal sexual act in the second degree and endangering the welfare of a child just after his wife's arrest husband William renzes told the New York Post quote my wife is innocent she's the mother of three kids she loves them very much she's been a big part of the community at her school we all support her we're saying she's innocent I won't elaborate any further why according to the charging documents renz met the student during summer school in 2022 when she was Dean at a middle school called Corona Arts and Science Academy she was one of the summer school teachers as well as a counselor for the victim and prosecutors say that renzie started grooming the 14-year-old boy by having sexual conversations with him on social media a few months later renzie started meeting up with the victim inside of her car near the school where she abused him the criminal complaint says that renz's raped the victim at least once a week for nearly a year now ironically Ren's actually shared a post on her Facebook page at one point in time about helping kids understand consent investigators were able to get their hands on screenshots of Instagram messages between renz and the underage boy that talked about these sexual activities how all of this came to light as a little bit of a different story from ones that we've heard before so renzie allegedly went to the principal of the school last summer to report that the student that she was allegedly abusing had threatened to shoot her and her family if she didn't give him $5,000 this is according to prosecutors it's not clear if the teacher told the principal why the student was trying to extort her the victim has since denied ever threatening renz but after that the student emailed the principal and assistant principal screenshots of his explicit alleged conversations with renz and accused her of having sex with him the victim spoke anonymously with the New York Post when this teacher was arrested and he says the first time that they met up in person after school she asked if she could kiss him while they were walking in a park he told the post quote this came out of nowhere I wasn't expecting it because she said that she had a husband and stuff I felt weird like I had to hug her back I hugged her I kissed her that's how it started teen claims that every time he met up with renes at her car near the school they had sex the victim claimed renes would sometimes give him money or nicotine products he says that the most she ever gave him at Le at once was $500 now the New York Post claimed that its reporters had viewed some of the text messages sent between the two which I will tell you are really stomach turning renz's reportedly wrote quote I want to be able to kiss those lips of yours and quote I want you so bad and now I got to go read kids books like WTF okay so that's part one now let's talk about part two this what appears to be a sweetheart deal that she seemed to have worked out I not sure i' fully get it but that's why we're going to have great people to talk about it so Ren could have faced up to seven years in prison but according to the Queen's DA they informed us that in October a grand jury returned an indictment of one count of endangering the welfare of a child which is just a misdemeanor and a harassment violation she entered a guilty plea on both and as part of that deal she won't serve any jail time she had been been released without bail during the investigation she had to permanently hand over her teaching license and resign from the school district she was ordered to complete a 52- week sex offender program and continue mental health counseling for at least the next year if she completes those after one year the court will vacate the misdemeanor charge for now a temporary restraining order has been put in place that says renzie can't go near the victim that will become a full order of protection for two years but keep this in mind even if she fails to comply with the conditions that the court ordered she would just be sentenced to 3 years probation on the misdemeanor charge so no prison time okay let's talk about this let's make sense of this let me bring on right now defense attorney Brian Claypool and renowned Predator catcher Chris Hansen the host of takedown on trueblue.com and the podcast Predators I've caught gentlemen great to have you both here Brian I will start with you I'm not sure I understand this deal if it was a deal if it was that these higher charges weren't submitted to the grand jury or they were submitted to the grand jury and grand jury didn't come back with the raid charges all I know is these are incredibly serious allegations incredibly serious initial charges and now no prison time what's going on hey Jesse great to see you again look this is a catastrophic failure of of a prosecution in this County but noty Jesse this is Nationwide I've been working on sexual abuse cases for over 12 years now represented hundreds of victims on the Civil side what I try to do on the Civil side is assist the criminal side to make sure to get prosecution by civil side I mean there's a lawsuit here pending as well uh by the 14-year-old's family against the school district what I'm seeing not only in California but cases Nationwide was a very laxidasical attitude Prosecuting these cases and even more so when it comes to a woman who has sexually abused a young boy it it's it's it's a major problem cuz like in this case you make a great point it looks like the prosecutor only submitted evidence on one count that that's that's insane this young boy was allegedly statutorily raped throughout a year there should have been 50 counts but I guess but I guess does it give you the idea that there's some weird history to this I mean I mentioned the idea of the alleged threats you have the husband defending uh the the wife maybe it was they couldn't prove it I don't know you tell me no not at all dude no there no way because you just made another good point in these sexual abuse cases Chris can probably speak to this a lot of times it's he said she said unless for example he gets some videotape of the alleged perpetrator con saying that he wants to do something to a minor or you have a text message or you have an email or you have a voicemail where the perpetrator is saying I want to do this to you here you have that it's like this isn'tt messages he said she she said so there's there's no mistake for these prosecutors to drop the ball hey everybody so one of my favorite things about being a host here on Law and crime is how passionate our audience is you guys you don't just sit back and watch no you engage you leave comments you give us feedback you make your opinions known can't tell you how much we appreciate that and value that and one of the most popular opinions that we have seen is how much you love our police interrogations and I have to agree because they are so unpredictable they let you see firsthand how detectives uncover the truth behind a crime the strategies they they use what suspects defendants say it is so important at trials can't tell you enough well I am excited to tell you that we here at long crime we have heard you loud and clear and we have launched a whole new YouTube channel dedicated only to interrogation videos it is apply named lawn crime interrogations and it is your new destination for all of the most gripping and unique interrogations on the internet we're talking the moments when Killers cracked false confessions the most elaborate coverup schemes that still seem to fail you can check it out go subscribe let us know what you think click the link in the description to step inside the interrogation room on law on crime interrogations Chris we talked so many times about the cases where charges are forthcoming where they're Prosecuting the person where they got a guilty plea on these serious charges or they're ultimately found convicted this is a different one well it is a much different case I mean this has been epidemic and the two of you know this that we we've seen more of these cases in the last two years than I've seen in the 40 previous years of my career so it's epidemic and obviously there's a situation sometimes in schools where female teachers are trying to replay a pleasant part of their life in their mind or they get off on a power trip and based upon the texts which nobody is disputing in this case there's good evidence that that happened here now you have this allegation that the boy threatened the teacher and the family is that legit or is that something that you know she concocted because she knew these charges potentially were coming that the relationship broke off or whatever happened here to me it doesn't make sense that they only got those uh lighter charges from the grand jury it seems like there was a lot more evidence there to more seriously charge and I I honestly I'm at a loss to explain why she's not facing more severe penalties here more severe charges a and Chris this is what I wanted to ask you um do you worry about her ability to be around other children right there's a part of the idea in the in the in the plea deal where she can no longer work uh in New York uh in the education system but I'll give you an idea the what thought about it we have this sponsor I don't know if you've heard of it it's called truthfinder and it's this large public record search platform for people anybody can use it you can look up if somebody has a criminal history or if somebody not necessarily if they're a registered sex offender it would cover that too but you could look up uh their history even if I would imagine a misdemeanor like this uh would would be something that would be listed but unless you use something like that like I don't know or you follow the news I don't know how some you would know about her in your community because these are still serious allegations whether or not she was convicted of a felony well exactly and and we've seen this pattern over and over across the country where school districts some of them may do a criminal background check in their own jurisdiction but they may not look hard enough or deep enough to see if there has been trouble elsewhere there have been a number of these investigative stories over the years and that's how these people get dusted up in one uh school district and end up moving to another state and they end up teaching there it seems that this is a case also where sometimes society looks differently at the female teacher having a sexual relationship with the male teenage student it's still viewed as you know a little boy's dream it's it's a fantasy come true what's the harm well there is harm there and if you ask this young man's parents I'm sure they've got a whole lot to deal with right now psychologically perhaps physically you know there's a reason why we have an age of consent in our nation and and this is why kids are not capable of making these decisions until they're older and developed we were just talking about truthfinder before with Chris and Brian about Melissa renz this idea of finding out the past of people in your lives well truthfinder is an incredible service they are a great sponsor of ours truthfinder is one of the largest public records search services in the entire world their whole goal is to help people like you learn the reality about the people in their lives you can go on their website truthfinder.com and what you do is you type in a name make it simple you type in mind Jesse Weber gives you a good start what happens is you automatically get access to all of these reports including information like phone numbers addresses Associates previous arrests criminal convictions especially in cases of predators that we cover if you type in an address like your home address it tells you registered sex offenders that may live in that area too that's the point unless you use truthfinder you may never really know what's going on with the people around you new neighbors friends schoolmates parents of your kids friends social media buddies you can use truthfinder to find out more information about them and you really can never be too careful in today's world so it's just a good idea to do it right now you can get 50% off of confidential background reports just go to truthfinder.com LC sidebar Brian you mentioned that lawsuit let's explore that a little bit so the boy's mother filed a lawsuit against the Department of Education back in January saying that officials should have prevented her son's sexual abuse and in one of the filings uh the victim's mother and guardian States quote at the risk of stating the obvious the AFF forementioned conduct occurred without my knowledge and was kept from me by my son in significant part due to his infancy now quick side note the words infant or infancy often used in the filing refer to the victim we we know he's a teen boy but in law infant in a filing like this can mean underage or Miner now there's also this other issue in terms of the lawsuit and whether it can even be brought is it too late it has something to do with a notice of claim so the document goes on to State quote since I do not have any legal training I was not aware that notice of claim against school districts must ordinarily be filed within 90 days of An Occurrence during this time I have been concerned with trying to help my son process the trauma that has transported and moved from this prolonged abuse that he has suffered rather than looking into the possibility of litigation and then she goes on to say that she and her attorney asked the court to allow them to file a late notice of claim and have moved with the forward with the civil suit um they're apparently looking for compensatory damages although it's unspecified walk me through that yeah sure uh Jesse just to give an example uh last three and a half years uh I represented if you can believe this to Chris's Point how bad this epidemic is I represented over a hundred victims in a in a massive uh child sexual abuse case against the city of Santa Monica that's a city on the west part of LA right on the ocean it's actually a very beautiful city but there was this program called the police activities League where young underserved kids in the community would go like for example during the summer and after school they play games they play sports they do go in the computer room and do their schoolwork and there was a guy that worked for the city that that uh he pre he worked at the city it Department pretended to be a police officer he dressed up with an undercover outfit you know have a badge he'd walk with his dog show up with an undercover car at all the ball games and everything he ended up molesting hundreds if not more kids uh in the 90s and early 2000s and what happened there is when we got involved typically laws across the country are you're required to First notify a government entity that you intend on suing them a school district every any school any public school district is what's considered a government entity so across the country you're required to give what's called a notice of claim which you're not you're notifying of the intent to Sue and a lot of times like what you're talking about even in our case these kids don't know they haven't told anybody think about that they haven't even disclosed the abuse how are they supposed to file a notice of claim within 90 days and that gives these school districts uh a loophole to avoid these lawsuits but one last point I want to make just so your listeners know this in order to sue a school district in and not only in California but Nationwide you got to prove one of two things that the school had actual notice of a teacher or in this case this after school actual notice that they pose a risk of serious harm to the kids what do I mean by that somebody has previously reported like like renzie in this case or or or the the guy that dressed up like a cop it's called actual notice if you don't have any complaint prior to that which a lot of times these cases you don't you can then prove it through should have known the school should have known and that gets to Chris's Point these School schools and after school programs across they just turn a blind eye uh Jesse and the big reason why is because make no mistake think about it all these schools are big business they are business Public Schools they get funding Jesse based on how many kids show up in their classroom on a daily basis and if you've got a rampant sexual abuse scandal going at your school parents are going to pull the kids they lose funding and they go out of business Chris do you do you think that's a valid uh concern that Brian makes I mean the idea here let's say the school district didn't actually know but they should have known how this was happen happening for a year and they could they didn't know about that in your expi you know what do you see well I I see that they should have known I think that you know anytime you have a school and a school program and you allow one-on-one exposure between vulnerable kids and adults you have the potential for danger things have to be monitored now of course there are Mentor programs and of course there are wonderful teachers out there who take it upon themselves to tutor these kids and they change lives right but if something like this is going on for a year and it's the sort of you know unique crime where kids don't report this right away because they've been groomed because they're confused they're not ready to handle this sort of intimate activity it goes on for a while before it's reported and then the child is embarrassed child is shocked we see this across the board with adults having you know one-on-one exposure ungoverned uh with adults in positions of power and so the schools do have responsibility and I I'll guarantee you that if you go back and look at all of this there were Whispers there were rumors there were perhaps even contacts between school officials and this particular teacher saying hey do you think this is the wisest way to go we see you spending a lot of time with this individual student and if there wasn't that contact there should have been so Brian let me close it out with you if there was if this lawsuit does proceed if it's allowed to move forward what are we looking at in terms of Damages whether this goes to trial and they're actually successful or there's a settlement by the school district and do you think it would be uh likely settled by the school district if the court allows it to go forward yeah great question Jessy typically across the country if you're a minor and you're still under 18 even though you missed that deadline you talked about the notice of claim deadline Most states or counties will allow the child to file what's called an a late claim because the statute limitations is told while they're minor so I think this young man will be able to proceed back to your other question I will tell you I'll speak to California Jesse we have seen massive verdicts and settlements over the last few years in these child sexual abuse cases because of what Chris was mentioning as well the reason why is even if a school says oh I didn't get actual notice of this teacher you know raping a young man there are what's called red flags and and I actually wrote a book a couple years ago it's called the break the Code of Silence and I talked about I even listed at the end of the book over 25 red flags that you customar you could any one of those you could customarily see it as school to Chris's point for example here in your point this young man was what he was raped allegedly raped over a year Jesse that th those are red flags some of them took place in the school premises something took place parked in a parking lot right next to the arch building so if anybody has a set of eyes and a set ears and they're paying attention they should see this going on there's a legal Doctrine called in Loco parentes which means in Latin that that that a school sits in the place as the parent of the child so these jurors across the country Jesse good trial lawyers were will argue that an opening and closing statement that there's a legal Duty for schools to take care of these students but but I'll finish with this I mean average settlements for example in a case like this would probably be in the before TR like before going to$ to5 million range and and and if you go to trial on these cases we're seeing upwards of 20 25 we even Jesse had a case recently out here in LA county for over a hundred million I'm not kidding you for a child sexual abuse case so jury even though prosecutors aren't taking this serious juries are and we know the standard of proof is lower and I will tell you as we all know that if this case progresses more information could come out so even if the uh criminal case is done through through the course of Discovery we could learn a lot more about the circumstances surrounding this than we did uh with a Criminal Case proceeding Brian Claypool Chris Hanson thank you both so much uh Brian is always on Brian's always on the media you can catch him every five seconds and again Chris host of takedown on true blue.com podcast Predators I've caught gentlemen thank you so much for coming on really appreciate it thank you guys and that's all we have for you here on sidebar everybody thank you so much for joining us as always please subscribe on Apple podcast Spotify YouTube wherever you get your podcast I'm Jesse Weber I'll speak to you next time [Music]

Channel: Law&Crime Network

Views: 197,869

Keywords: law and crime, law and crime network, true crime, truecrime, true crime videos, court, trials, law&crime

Id: p_MHh42crgg

Length: 22min 12sec (1332 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 16 2024