Female Sex Offenders

Allenna Williams Ward

Allenna Williams Ward, a middles school English teacher, age 23, has been accused of having sex with five different boys, ages 14 and 15, in the space of two months, starting in December 2006. The investigation began when school officials at Bell Street Middle School in Clinton, South Carolina recovered a note, given to them by a group of students. Its author was the teacher, Allenna Williams, and she had passed the note to one of the seventh grade boys. Since it contained sexually inappropriate messages, the principal summoned Ward to her office.

Surprisingly, Ward admitted to writing it and added that she had written others as well. She was placed on administrative leave, pending further investigation. Once officials started asking questions, they learned quite a lot from the students. This wasn't just a troubling incident involving a single student, but a number of such transgressions had occurred with others. They called the police.

Clinton's chief of police, John Thomas, came to the school himself to look at the letters and listen to the various accounts. It was clear to him that this was a criminal matter and he initiated his own investigation. On February 28, 2007, Ward was arrested as well as dismissed from her school employment. Charged with five counts of criminal sexual conduct with a minor in the second degree and six counts of lewd acts on a minor, she sat in a jail cell, refusing to talk and relatives got her released on a $110,000 bail.

As are most of these women, Ward was married but she nevertheless pursued sexual encounters with underage boys — allegedly five of them. While the typical such relationship involves an older female teacher and only one of her students, in this case, there was more than one. Supposedly, Ward had sex in a variety of places, from a park to the school where she worked, to a motel.

The school board was quick to issue a release, claiming that they screen potential employees with a criminal background check and instruct new hires on the school policies abut inappropriate behavior. They were shocked and saddened by Ward's behavior.

The Internet message boards were abuzz with comments about how Ward had been raised a preacher's daughter and had presented herself as a good Christian. People who knew her stated that they would not have predicted this kind of behavior from her. Yet the women who keep such secrets are generally good at developing a façade so that no one discovers what they're doing. The boys in this case apparently were making no comment.

Only the year before, in the same area, another female teacher approached an even younger boy.