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AP reports a senior Iranian naval commander says his country has sent several warships to the Atlantic Ocean, close to U.S. maritime borders for the first time.

The commander of Iran's Northern Navy Fleet, Admiral Afshin Rezayee Haddad, is quoted by the official IRNA news agency as saying Saturday that the vessels have already begun the journey to the Atlantic Ocean via waters near South Africa.

Iranian officials said last month that the fleet consisted of a destroyer and a logistic helicopter carrier, which will be on a three-month mission.

Haddad says the fleet is approaching U.S. maritime borders for the first time. The Islamic Republic considers the move as a response to U.S. naval deployments near its own coastlines. The U.S. Navy's 5th fleet is based in nearby Bahrain.

WREG reports a Shelby County Schools teacher and his firefighter roommate were arrested for statutory rape.


Deputies say two 17-year-old girls told them they were involved in sexual relationships with the men.

A girl told investigators in one case, the consensual sex happened inside a Bolton High School classroom numerous times.
Bolton teacher and assistant basketball coach Michael Lewis, 31, is charged with statutory rape by an authority figure and aggravated statutory rape.
The girl also said she spent at least three nights with Lewis at his home.

A Memphis firefighter who lives at the same address as Lewis is also charged with statutory rape of a 17-year-old female.

The second girl told police she stayed with Bryan Wilson, 31, at least ten nights and had consensual sex five times.

Lewis is suspended without pay from his job as a Shelby County Schools teacher and coach. He was hired by the school district in January 2012 and started teaching at Bolton High that July.

“I didn’t think nothing like this would be said about him that he would do anything like this,” said Trebor Jackson, student.

No one answered the door at the men’s Bartlett home when we wen knocking, but we found what looked like a keg of beer sitting on the porch of the bachelor pad.
Neighbors are surprised by the arrest.

“Nobody is immune from making mistakes. In this case it sounds like they made a big mistake,” said Larry Milligan, neighbor.

“He’s older. He’s more experienced. He knows what to say,” said 21-year-old Andrea Phillips.

Investigators say the teen girls said sex was consensual but it’s a crime because they are underage and at least one of the men was in a position of authority.

One woman who didn’t want to be identified said, “You’re their leader so you know that shouldn’t happen. How can you even look at a child in that sense. That’s disgusting.”
Disgusting maybe, but it’s the second time in less than a year a Bolton teacher and coach has been in trouble for an inappropriate relationship with a student.

Math teacher and assistant football coach La-Torrence Bivens was fired last April.
“The same thing just different teachers,” said Jackson.

Still, students are surprised at this latest arrest.

Bolton student Alex Thacker said, “He was a great coach and everything. I heard great things about him. When I heard about this, I was actually kind of shocked.”

Both Lewis and his roommate are still in jail.

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Daily Callerreports a teenage college student who had a passionate affair with a Southern California high school teacher and is now the father of her child has filed a lawsuit against the teacher and the local school district.

The unidentified dad, now 18, also casts partial blame on the teacher’s parents, who have stepped in to help raise the child while the wayward teacher served a prison sentence for her part in the illicit relationship, reports NBC Los Angeles.

The disgraced teacher, Laura Elizabeth Whitehurst, was employed at Citrus Valley High School in Redlands, Calif. when the tryst occurred.

The male student was 16. He is now an 18-year-old college student.

The frisky 10th-grade English teacher (and one-time assistant girls soccer coach) initiated the relationship the summer before last during a school-related function. 

Whitehurst, 29, was charged with 41 felony counts of sexual intercourse and oral copulation. Three male high school students were involved (at different times). She pleaded guilty and served half of a one-year sentence. She was released from prison last month.

In the 40-page lawsuit filed against the Redlands Unified School District, plaintiff’s attorney John Manly wrote, “Children in Redlands should not be a sex toy for their teacher.”

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Washington Post reports a former Montgomery County teacher accused of sexually abusing 15 young students was ordered held without bond Friday after prosecutors recounted a story alleging that he faked his death to avoid one of the victims who tried to track him down after she’d become an adult.


“The victim sought to locate the defendant and confront the defendant,” Assistant State’s Attorney Tim Hagan said in court.

In response, Lawrence W. Joynes posted a fictitious death certificate on his personal Web site and wrote a post indicating that he had committed suicide, according to Hagan and court papers. The ruse appears to have worked.

Hagan’s allegations speak to what authorities say was a concerted effort by Joynes going back more than two decades to cover up his abuse. The music teacher was arrested early last year and has been held behind bars since.

The latest court hearing addressed whether Joynes, 55, should be allowed to leave jail on bond prior to any trial in Montgomery. Hagan argued that Joynes’s deception over his death showed that he is a flight risk.

The alleged faking of his death is connected with what court papers describe as Joynes’s first victim, someone he met in 1991 when she was a seventh-grader at Eastern Middle School in Silver Spring. The student got to know Joynes and confided that she had been abused by a family member.

“Joynes had become the victim’s advocate and confidant,” Montgomery Police Detective Gary Irwin wrote in an affidavit filed in court. “The victim increasingly felt safe and secure with Joynes.”

As the two spent more time together, Joynes spoke to her about God, told her that he loved her, told her that he would take care of her and eventually kissed her, according to the affidavit. The contact escalated over several months to intercourse.

In 2005, when the woman was about 26, she “began an attempt to bring closure to this chapter of her life by confronting Joynes.” She found his Web site (www.bearded
wolf.com) and sent an e-mail. “Shortly after, the ‘beardedwolf’ website posted the death certificate of Lawrence Joynes and also displayed a posting that indicated that Joynes had committed suicide. The victim believed this to be true,” the affidavit states.

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