A Pulaski County circuit judge on Friday rejected a challenge by a fired privateschool athletic director to the state law that mandates who is required to report knowledge or suspicion of child molestation.

Kathy Gene Griffin, 55, is charged with misdemeanor failure to notify over allegations that she knew or had suspicions that a teacher at Mount St. Mary’s Academy had a sexual relationship with a student but did not report what she knew to the state’s child-abuse hot line as she’s required to under the law, Arkansas Code Annotated 12-18-201.

Griffin was the athletic director at the Little Rock school, where she had been a coach, teacher, dean of discipline and counselor during her 27-year career there.

She is scheduled to stand trial in January and faces up to a year in jail.

Fired teacher and coach Kelly Ann O’Rourke, 41, is charged with first-degree sexual assault - which carries a 30-year maximum - over allegations she had sexual contact with a student, who has since graduated.

The women have known each other since O’Rourke, who graduated from Mount St. Mary’s in 1989, was in high school and Griffin was one of her teachers, according to prosecutors. Griffin was O’Rourke’s supervisor, prosecutors said in court filings, and the women had been roommates before.

The pair were fired after the school principal reported in March that the student, now 19, had told her parents that she and O’Rourke had a sexual relationship that began in 2010.

According to arrest affidavits, the student told her parents what was happening with O’Rourke on Feb. 24. In a meeting two days later, which the parents recorded, O’Rourkeadmitted to engaging in a sexual relationship with the teenage daughter since 2010, court filings show.

After that meeting, Griffin contacted the parents and asked that they “do the best thing for the school” and not tell anyone.

Twelve days later, the teen’s father told Griffin that the accusations were going to be reported to authorities, court filings show. Three days after that, Griffin told the principal what was going on, saying she had not reported the allegations for two weeks “for the good of the school.”

The principal notified authorities through the abuse hot line and informed police directly on March 14, two days after meeting with Griffin, according to court files and police reports. The school publicly acknowledged the firings that same day after the police report was released.

Griffin’s attorney, Jeff Rosenzweig, called on Circuit Judge Barry Sims to dismiss the charge against his client. In his pleadings to the court, Rosenzweig argued that Griffin was not required by law to notify the state’s hot line because the student was an adult at 18 and a graduate of the school by the time Griffin learned in February about the allegations against O’Rourke.

He said the reporting law that lists who must report suspicions of child abuse conflicts with Arkansas Code Annotated 12-18-306 of the Child Maltreatment Act, which greatly restricts who the hot line can accept reports from about adult victims of childhood sexual abuse.

The law lists 39 categories of occupations or volunteer workers who must report abuse suspicion. But for adult victims of childhood sexual assault, the law allows the hot line to accept reports only from people in four categories: victims, their counselors, their perpetrators or police, according to the defense filing.

That conflict absolves Griffin of any reporting obligation, Rosenzweig argued.

“The state cannot honestly say that Griffin is within any of the ... categories of persons from whom the hotline is even permitted to take reports,” a 10-page defense brief states. “It is a simple matter of logic that if the hotline is not even permitted to take Griffin’s report under the statute, Griffin cannot have committed a crime even if she failed to report. To hold otherwise would be ... absurd.”

Rosenzweig also argued in court filings that Griffin didn’t violate the law because she did report what she knew to the hot line on March 11, a day before Griffin told the school principal.

But Sims refused to throw out the case at a hearing Friday, siding with prosecutors who argued that Griffin could have known about what was going on between O’Rourke and the student for as long as a year before the allegations came to light.

Senior deputy prosecutor Terry Ball also disputed the defense claim that Griffin only became aware of the allegations of a sexual relationship in February. Griffin told the school principal that she’d known for two weeks before informing the principal, according to a prosecution filing.

The reporting law requires an “immediate” hot line call, Ball said in her pleadings, stating that prosecutors have sufficient evidence for a trial in which a jury can decide whether Griffin acted immediately.

“There is substantial circumstantial evidence that Griffin knew or reasonably should have suspected O’Rourke’s actions with the victim at a much earlier date,” the prosecution pleading states. “It is a question for the jury to determine whether [jurors] believe a two-week delay in reporting - for the good of the school - is ‘immediate’ reporting.”

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 16 on 11/17/2012