There have been at least 65 arrests of education employees in North Carolina between Jan. 1 and Dec. 26.

Update: The arrest total has increased by two as of arrests made on Dec. 28 and Dec. 29.

Only 7 of those arrests were for crimes that did not have a sexual component involving a student or minor.

15 of the 65 occurred since the start of the 2023-24 school year which began in late August.

For the same arrest period beginning Jan. 1, there were two convictions; Jason Matthew Hensley and Almando Kilpatrick Brown.

For the arrests since Jan. 1 of this year, there were two cases where charges were either dismissed; Maria Amanda Heyliger and Geoff Larry Harte.

Here are some overall and year-specific stats for cases I have tracked or reported on since 2016:

• 368 arrests
• 155 convictions
• 61 of the 368 are registered as sex offenders

The majority of arrests since 2016, 343, were public school teachers, including charter schools which are deemed public schools in North Carolina. In 2023, 63 of the 64 were public school teachers.

My data includes a handful of arrests from 2011-2015. I began tracking and reporting on these arrests regularly in 2016.

The chart (below) logs various categories I track, including if the individual had an active, expired, or no NC teaching license at the time of arrest and if they are a public or private school teacher.

Note: Sex offender registrations are recorded under the arrest year but those registrations can & often occur in years following the arrest. Example: Tammy Tyner Moran was arrested in 2021 but convicted and registered in 2023.

*Note: the chart below does not include the two arrests logged following original publication of this article.

Additionally, it should be noted that the total of revoked teacher licenses in the chart above is based on a list maintained by the state and is slow to be updated.

Not all teachers who had a license at the time of arrest make the revoked license list. This is mainly due to the case usually having to be adjudicated before a license can be revoked.

Contrary to information disseminated by certain individuals and groups, licenses that lapse between the time of arrest and a conviction or acquittal are flagged, and the individual in question does not have access to students.  In other words, just because the license is listed as active, it is not necessarily a license in good standing.

Also, not all of the arrests are classroom teachers. Some have been bus drivers, custodial staff, and even principals or assistant principals.

A version of this article with more details on North Carolina legislative changes is available on my Substack.

For those wondering why I track these arrests, it goes back around a decade when I learned that the son of a friend of mine had been sexually assaulted by a male school employee for the better part of two years. The abuse, which included violent instances of rape, began when the boy was 12 and had just entered middle school.

Heading into 2024, I am deciding whether or not to continue reporting each case or whether I will just track arrests statistically. The topic has taken a toll on me both mentally and in personal time spent running down each case.

If my reporting on this topic has been of use, consider throwing a few bucks to my PayPal to help cover the cost of this website, records request fees, and other costs incurred while investigating Quiet Epidemic incidents.

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