A creepy South Carolina “Trainer of the 12 months” who admitted to bombarding an 11-year-old pupil with greater than 60 love letters will solely need to serve probation.
Dylan Robert Dukes, 27, was handed the slap on the wrist sentence after pleading responsible final week to harassing the younger woman with the notes, presents and undesirable hugs when she was in his class at Starr Elementary Faculty final 12 months, WSAZ reported.
At one level, Dukes even gave the woman a personalised field with a letter for every day of week for your complete summer time break.
When the woman’s household finally pulled her from the varsity, the obsessed trainer went so far as becoming a member of her native church.
Cops later discovered scores of photographs of the woman stashed inside Dukes’ desk once they searched his classroom.
The pictures weren’t sexual in nature, police acknowledged on the time.
“My baby has needed to endure moments of uncomfortability in locations like church, college and sports activities, the place my baby ought to be snug and in a position to get pleasure from being a toddler,” the woman’s mother advised considered one of his court docket hearings final 12 months.
“He began attending our church,” she added. “I now notice that this entry to my baby had continued to develop his obsession.”
The Anderson County Sheriff’s Workplace believed they thwarted the stalking earlier than it developed into something much more sinister.
“Detectives had been in a position to cease the harassment and stalking earlier than it turned something bodily – which the juvenile was in worry of,” the sheriff’s workplace mentioned on the time.
Dukes, who was initially arrested on stalking expenses, pleaded responsible to first-degree harassment final week. He was sentenced to a few years in jail, which was suspended to 5 years of probation.
Underneath the phrases of his plea deal, Dukes has to attend psychological well being counseling, quit his instructing certificates and cling to a everlasting restraining order that bans any contact with the woman.
Dukes, who was positioned on administrative go away when he was first arrested, was named the varsity’s 2023–2024 Trainer of the 12 months.
His present standing on the college wasn’t instantly identified.
