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Teacher's aide charged with sex
offense
November 18, 2006
By Deborah Buckhalter
A 29-year-old female teacher's aide
from Chipley has been charged with a sex offense involving a
16-year-old male housed at Dozier School For Boys, according to the
Marianna Police Department. Sheretha Lavone Paramore was arrested
early Friday morning by an officer with the Chipley Police
Department, on behalf of Marianna authorities. She will be
transferred to the Jackson County jail, but was still being held in
the Washington County Correctional Facility as of late Friday.
The Department of Juvenile Justice,
which oversees Dozier School, asked Marianna police in September to
launch an investigation into alleged misconduct by Paramore. The
Florida Department of Law Enforcement is also involved.
Paramore is charged with having
"unlawful sexual activity with a minor," according to the Jackson
County jail docket. "Sex" as described in the related statute is "to
engage in oral, anal or vaginal penetration by, or in union with,
the sexual organ."
The MPD would not specify which act
or acts Paramore is accused of, but a complaint filed with the court
goes into some detail. The complaint also reveals that staff failed
to file an incident report on the matter, even though a supervisor
was made aware of some letters containing sexual content that
Paramore allegedly sent or gave to the juvenile. According to the
complaint, those letters "disappeared" from the victim's file within
24 hours after the cottage overseer who discovered them had notified
his lieutenant and placed them back in the boy's file.
The complaint states that the
juvenile "disclosed that he had received sexually explicit letters
from (Paramore), both when he was 15 years of age and 16 years of
age." He went on to describe two types of incidents in which he says
Paramore engaged in sexual behavior.
There is another complication
related to the letters. According to the complaint, one of
Paramore's co-workers admitted to delivering one of the six original
letters. She also admitted to rewriting the last letter herself,
delivering it through another inmate. The letter was concealed in a
book, according to the complaint, that the inmate delivered to the
victim. The complaint does not say why the co-worker rewrote the
sixth letter.
The complaint contains other
information about that letter, as well. Written by an MPD officer
investigating the case, the complaint states: "That letter was
recovered by a house parent. The house parent gave me that original
letter, saying she had secured the original because of the
disappearance of the other six letters. She also turned in a copy of
that letter to her supervisor, along with an incident report upon
securing it."
Paramore is employed by the
Washington County School Board to help teachers working with Dozier
detainees. According to the MPD, she has worked at Dozier close to
two years and was once a student at Marianna High School.
According to the MPD, the
investigation centers around alleged incidents dating from May of
this year.
Paramore has been on paid
administrative leave since early October, when the MPD was first
brought into the case, according to local police.
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