A female teacher in Bay City, Texas has been arrested and charged with online solicitation and improper relationship with a student, after a local man caught her having sex with his 13-year-old child in the backseat of a car.
The angry father reported the matter on December 14 to the school police, who referred the matter to the Bay City Police Department. After a weeklong investigation, the authorities detained Rachel Gonzalez, 44, on December 22.
After obtaining a search warrant, the police looked at the 13-year-old’s phone and found conversations about the sexual relationship with the teacher. Gonzalez, who teaches at the Bay City High School, was charged with online solicitation of a minor and improper relationship between educator and student.
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While several news outlets reported that the teenager is male, the BCPD declined to disclose the student’s gender. Gonzalez has since been granted bail and is awaiting trial, KPRC reported.
A Texas law that went into effect in September seeks to crack down on improper student-teacher relationships by imposing stiff penalties for teachers engaging in misconduct and administrators who fail to report it. In 2016-17, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) reported conducting 302 investigations into sexual misconduct, which is a 145 percent increase from 2008-09, when TEA began tracking these cases, according to Breitbart Texas.
Bay City is a community of almost 18,000 residents in Matagorda County, roughly 80 miles southwest of Houston.