Wednesday, January 23, 2013
By Julia Maldonado, Capital News Service
- POLICE & FIRE
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Wednesday, January 23
ANNAPOLIS—Part-time school employees in Maryland have been able to engage in sexual relationships with students as young as 16 and avoid prosecution due to a loophole in state law. Delegates from Montgomery and Allegany counties proposed two bills Tuesday that would prohibit school employees 21 and over—including full-time, part-time, contractors and coaches—from having sexual contact with minor students. The current law was passed in 2006 and only prohibits full-time employees from sexual contact with students who are of legal age to consent, which is 16 in Maryland. During their testimonies, delegates Sam Arora (D-Dist. 19) of Silver Spring and Luiz R. S. Simmons (D-Dist. 17) of Rockville, cited the recent case involving Scott Spear, a…
Sunday, June 24, 2012
Scott Duane Spear says he was wrongly accused, but 'the damage ... has been done.'
A Julius West Middle School teacher and Richard Montgomery High School coach has resigned his teaching and coaching positions, more than three months after the state dropped charges accusing him of having sex with a 16-year-old former student. In March, the state dropped both of the two fourth-degree sex offense charges against Scott Duane Spear, 47, of Rockville. "The allegations were false and this was a rush to judgment," Spear said in a statement released by his attorney, Steven VanGrack, Wednesday. "But after suffering through the highly publicized pain of being wrongly accused, the damage to my professional reputation has been done." Spear said he decided to resign because “the ordeal has been grueling for me and my family, and we …
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
State's attorney's spokesman: Top prosecutor "knows Mr. Spear."
The Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office has turned over to prosecutors from Anne Arundel County the case of a teacher and coach from Rockville charged with having sex with a 16-year-old girl. The Montgomery County office will not prosecute Scott Duane Spear “to avoid the appearance of impropriety,” said Seth Zucker, a spokesman for the Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office. The transfer of the case was first reported in The Sentinel. Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy “knows Mr. Spear,” Zucker said on Tuesday. “Even though the state’s attorney himself would not be prosecuting the case he has asked another jurisdiction’s prosecutor to prosecute the case.” The transfer request is not unusual, said Zucker, who …
Monday, February 6, 2012
ABC7: Julius West teacher 'offered to take a polygraph,' attorney says.
The former Rockville mayor representing Scott Duane Spear, a Julius West Middle School teacher accused of having sex with a 16-year-old student who he coached at Richard Montgomery High School, says the accuser is making up the story, ABC7 reports. Steven VanGrack, who served as Rockville’s mayor from 1985 to 1987, told ABC7 that Spear “professes complete innocence and in fact what was interesting was he met with me and offered to take a polygraph.” VanGrack also suggested that the accuser fabricated the allegations against Spear, who also coaches boys basketball at Richard Montgomery, where media was barred from a game against Col. Zadok Magruder High School on Friday evening. “This could be a troubled young girl who is making allegations…
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Police say Scott Duane Spear had sex with a 16-year-old who he taught and coached.
A Rockville man who teaches at Julius West Middle School and coaches boys basketball and track at Richard Montgomery High School was arrested Thursday and is accused of having sex with a 16-year-old student, county police said in a news release. Scott Duane Spear, 47, of the 1600 block of Auburn Avenue in Rockville, is charged with two counts of fourth-degree sex offense. Police said the department’s Family Crimes Division received information on Friday from an unnamed person who said that a 16-year-old Richard Montgomery student had told the source that she had sex with Spear. Spear, who teaches social studies at Julius West, had been the student’s teacher when she was in eighth grade and had been her track coach since 2009, according to …
Caitlin D
6:23 am on Monday, June 25, 2012
I hate this more ›