LITTLE ROCK — A fired private-school athletic director claims that no law required her to report a sexual relationship between a teacher and a student and, consequently, prosecutors overstepped their authority by charging her for not alerting officials to the relationship.
In a motion to dismiss the charges against her, 55-yearold Kathy Gene Griffin says she did notify the proper authorities even though she had no legal obligation to do so.
Representing Griffin, defense attorney Jeff Rosenzweig told Pulaski County Circuit Judge Barry Sims on Friday that his client is challenging the legality of the misdemeanor count of failure to notify by a mandated reporter.
In his 10-page dismissal motion, Rosenzweig argues no crime was committed because the student was an adult by the time Griffin had any reason to believe anything inappropriate was going on. Griffin didn’t have any reason to be suspicious until about three months after the student turned 18, according to the motion.
Senior deputy prosecutor Terry Ball disputed Rosenzweig’s interpretation of the law and told the judge she’s preparing a response.
Griffin, who faces up to a year in jail, made her first circuit-court appearance Friday along with her co-defendant, 41-year-old Kelly Ann O’Rourke, the fired teacher and coach accused of having an 18-month sexual relationship with a student. The relationship began in January 2010 when the girl was 16, case records show.
O’Rourke, represented by attorney Jack Lassiter, is charged with first-degree sexual assault, a Class A felony that carries a 30-year maximum.
At the six-minute hearing, the judge scheduled a four-day trial for January and ordered the defendants not to have any contact with the teenager, who has since graduated. The nocontact order is a routine procedure.
Griffin was a 26-year employee at the all-girls Mount St. Mary Academy, a 159-yearold institution on Kavanaugh Boulevard, in March when she and O’Rourke, a 1989 graduate, were fired in the wake of a complaint by Principal Diane Wolfe, 56, to the Arkansas State Police’s child-abuse hot line.
Wolfe told authorities that O’Rourke, a math teacher and volleyball coach, had been sexually involved with a student. The girl had disclosed the relationship to her parents, Wolfe told police.
Griffin learned about the relationship in February and tried to keep the girl and her family from revealing it, according to arrest warrants. Griffin told school officials in March, after learning police were going to be notified, according to police reports.
Griffin, who was also a ninth-grade Mount St. Mary counselor, was a “mandatory reporter” required by law to notify the abuse hot line as soon as she had a “reasonable cause” to suspect a child was being molested, authorities say.
Arkansas Code 12-18-402 lists 37 occupations and fields of employment or volunteering required to notify the hot line, including teachers, school counselors, some government employees, dental hygienists and clergy members with counseling duties.
Griffin was not legally obligated to report child-molestation allegations made by a victim as an adult, her lawyer’s motion to dismiss states.
Rosenzweig argues that the prosecution’s interpretation of the Child Maltreatment Act, Chapter 18 of Title 12 of the Arkansas Code, would lead to “absurd” results, like requiring a caretaker for an 80-year-old man to report to authorities when the man discloses that he was abused at age 10.
Even the section of the maltreatment act that involves adult victims who disclose they’ve been molested as children does not require that someone in Griffin’s position report the allegations, the motion states.
Under Arkansas Code Annotated 12-18-306, Griffin would have to be both a “caretaker” and therapist or counselor for the adult victim before she would be required to report such allegations to the childabuse hot line, according to the motion. Since she is neither of those things, the hot line cannot accept her report, the motion states.
“There certainly is no explicit statement in the statute that a mandated reporter is required to report abuse of someone who has attained adulthood at the time the reporter comes into this information,” the motion states. “Nor is there any judicial decision from Arkansas so stating.”
Griffin did call the hot line with her suspicions, according to the motion, but even if the judge decides that Griffin was required to report, the motion says, the law does not set any requirements on how soon she should do so.
There’s a conflict in the law, Rosenzweig argues, with mandatory reporters required to “immediately” report, while the statute that criminalizes nonreporting has no time for a response.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 07/28/2012