A jury Wednesday sentenced a former Mount St. Mary Academy athletic director to one year of supervised probation after finding her guilty of not immediately reporting a sexual relationship between a teacher and a student.
After deliberating on the sentence for about 30 minutes, the jury also sentenced Kathy Griffin, 56, to pay a $2,500 fine. She was found guilty of failure to notify by a mandated reporter, a Class A misdemeanor that carries a maximum prison sentence of one year in jail.
The sexual relationship was between former math teacher and coach Kelly O’Rourke, 42, and a student, who was 16 at the time the relationship began. Griffin, who had had a relationship with O’Rourke, learned about the sexual assault of the student on Feb. 24, 2012, and notified authorities two weeks later after finding out that someone else was about to report it, prosecutors said.
Under Arkansas law, mandated reporters - including school officials, doctors, attorneys, social workers and other professionals - are required to immediately notify authorities about suspected child abuse or maltreatment.
In Pulaski County Circuit Judge Barry Sims’ courtroom Wednesday, Mount St. Mary Principal Diane Wolfe testified that she and Sister Lisa Griffith, an assistant principal, were attending a conference in New York City on March 11, 2012, and were headed to lunch when Griffin called to tell Wolfe about the sexual relationship.
Wolfe said she and Griffith“kind of gathered our wits about us,” headed back to the hotel and devised a plan to handle the news. Wolfe said she consulted the Diocese of Little Rock’s checklist in handling sexual-assault allegations and called a number of people, including the victim’s family, O’Rourke and the Sisters of Mercy, which is the school’s sponsoring organization.
During cross-examination, Griffin’s attorney, Jeff Rosenzweig, showed Wolfe a copy of the diocese’s policies. She said the list - which prosecutors presented during earlier discovery hearings - was not the same as the one she accessed on the diocese’s website. After further questioning, jurors were excused from the room, and Rosenzweig moved for a mistrial because of a discovery violation.
Sims denied the request. The trial was Griffin’s second on the same offense. During a trial in late January, the jury deadlocked 6-6, prompting Sims to declare a mistrial.
Wolfe testified that she called the state child-abuse hotline, even though Griffin had called the hotline earlier that day.
“It bothered me she reported anonymously,” Wolfe said of Griffin. “I was afraid the hotline would think it’s a prank, so I called as principal of Mount St. Mary.”
Wolfe placed Griffin and O’Rourke on administrative leave that same day and told them not to return to the school, she said. O’Rourke had been around children for 16 days after she first told Griffin about the relationship, Wolfe added.
In a meeting with school officials and legal counsel on March 12, 2012, Griffin toldthe group that she kept quiet “for the good of the school,” Wolfe testified.
“I told her what she had done has actually put us in crisis mode,” Wolfe said.
Griffin didn’t testify during the two-day trial.
Prosecutors argued that Griffin, who was a freshman counselor and the dean of discipline, was a mandated reporter, knew about the sexual assault and intentionally delayed notifying authorities about it.
Griffin “was torn” between reporting the sexual assault of the student and protecting O’Rourke, with whom she’d lived on and off for about a decade, O’Rourke testified Tuesday. O’Rourke also said she had denied several times to Griffin her involvement with the student, a relationship that lasted from January 2010 to about January 2012.
O’Rourke was convicted in January of first-degree sexual assault. In a plea deal, she was sentenced to four months in jail and a 15-year suspended prison sentence. Under the deal, she was also required to testify and not contact the victim.
She broke the terms of her plea agreement several times when she called the victim while she was in jail, court records show. O’Rourke pleaded guilty Monday to violating the plea deal, and Sims will hand down a sentence in October.
Referring to O’Rourke’s testimony, deputy prosecutor Jeanna Sherrill said Griffin suspected that the former coach was sexually involved with the student.
“From Feb. 24, 2012, until her hand was forced on March 11, [Griffin] violated the law,” Sherrill said.
But Griffin did report thesexual assault “just not fast enough,” Rosenzweig argued, adding that the victim, who was 18 when Griffin learned of the relationship, didn’t want anyone to know about it.
The jury deliberated about 45 minutes before convicting Griffin.
During the sentencing phase, the victim’s mother sobbed as she told jurors how she’s lost her relationship with her daughter, now 19 and a college student. Also, Wolfe said school officials have worked for 18 months to rebuild the trust between teachers and students.
Senior deputy prosecutor Terry Ball said she was “gratified” by the jury’s verdict.
“It’s so important to have the jury speak and say, ‘We have got to take care of our children,’” she said.
After the sentencing Wednesday, Rosenzweig said he plans to appeal the case, arguing that there was no crime committed.
“We still take the position that there was no legal obligation to report it,” he said.
He pointed to Arkansas Code 12-18-306, which states that a hotline operator can take a sexual-assault report involving an adult victim if the offender is the victim’s caretaker or if the offender, victim, law-enforcement officers, or counselors for either the victim or the offender reports it.
The Diocese of Little Rock’s policies require mandated reporters to notify the child-abuse hotline if the victim is underage. But if the victim is an adult, the policies require the mandated reporters to go to the bishop.
“No crime was ever committed because she was 18 and an adult when [Griffin] found out,” Rosenzweig said.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 8 on 09/23/2013