Baldwin County Teacher Indicted On Sex Charges

Alabama Robertsdale  Grand jury handed down 12 indictments against Brian Pettibone a teacher/basketball coach at Central Baldwin Middle School.
by WKRG Staff
Published: Tue, February 24, 2009 - 12:47 pm CST Last Updated: Tue, February 24, 2009 - 4:48 pm CST
A Baldwin County Grand Jury has indicted a Central Baldwin Middle School teacher and basketball coach on sex charges.

Brian Pettibone is accused of texting and calling four female students under the age of 14. Prosecutors say the texts and phone calls eventually lead to physical contact.

Below is a list of the indictments against Pettibone:
- Four counts of enticing a child under 16
- One count of attempted sex abuse
- Three counts of sex abuse
- Four counts of harassment

Prosecutors say their could be more victims.

News 5 spoke with District Attorney Judy Newcomb after today's hearing. "If you're a student and a teacher has done this, let us know."

We'll have more on this case tonight on News 5 at 5:00 and 6:00.

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Yes, this is terrible.  But, let’s take a deep breath before we start teacher bashing. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are 6.2 million teachers in the U.S. According to the link provided by triumph110, 475 teachers were investigated for or charged with this kind of behavior last year. That’s .007%. Any percent is too much, I know.  And, there might be exactly that many more that we don’t know about, but that’s still barely one hundreth of one percent.
I am going to talk to my kids about this sort of stuff and believe in the integrity of most teachers.

This is happening all over the country. Go to http://www.schoolteachernews.com and click on the Scandal page. This year they have documented over 75 of these types of incidents. Last year they found 479 of these kinds of cases.

I am still trying to take this all in. This was my Physics teacher two years ago and I never thought he would ever do something like this. I heard supposed “rumors” about all of this, but I thought it was just something going around because kids can start something and get an innocent teacher fired, or even arrested. I never saw any of this type of activity when I had him as a teacher, but me and him knew eachother pretty well and I thought he was pretty cool. We would talk about football, cars and other stuff. He was a little immature for his age and he did sort-of classify people into two invisibe main goups, which were the kids he liked and the kids he didn’t like, which I never knew if it was based on the financial status of the kids or the “appearance” of them. I ended up with a high “A” in his class at the end, but I really didn’t earn it. What I’ve learned is that you can never judge someone until you have actually experienced what they are really like, so use caution.

This is ridiculous. I see why a lot of families in Baldwinn County home school. You don’t know who you can trust.

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