Your donation will help us produce journalism like this. Please give today.

By Conor Friedersdorf

When M.S. was 13, her math teacher at Edison middle school in Los Angeles invited her to be friends online. Soon the 8th grader was receiving sexually explicit messages. That winter, she was called into a classroom and told to shut the door. The teacher, Elkis Hermida, kissed and hugged the student. In March, he drove M.S. (as she’s referred to in court records, to protect her privacy), then 14, to a motel, where they had sexual intercourse. Another time, he rearranged furniture in his classroom and had sex with the girl right there.

When they had intercourse a third time, at a motel, Hermida told M.S. that they were not in a relationship—they were just having sex. At that point, M.S. “wanted to stop having sexual intercourse with Hermida, but did not feel that she was free to do so,” a California appeals court stated. At their next encounter, the teacher wanted anal sex. M.S. objected. “Hermida inserted something into her anus anyway,” the court said.

Click here for the full story.