Two charges of fourth-degree sex offense against Montgomery County Public Schools teacher and coach Scott Spear have been dropped.
The school district suspended Spear in early February after he was arrested and accused of having sex with a student.
Spear was accused of having sex with the 16-year-old girl in a Rockville home sometime last spring and again the following night.
The student told someone about the alleged incident last November.
But because of Spear's part-time status at the high school, it would not have been illegal for him to have consensual sex with a 16-year-old.
"The way the current law is written, the accused must be 'a full-time, permanent employee' of the school. In this case, Mr. Spear was not a full-time employee at the school the girl attended," said Kristin Fleckenstein, communications director for the Anne Arundel County State's Attorney's Office. "While he may have been her teacher when she was in middle school, he was not at the time of the allegations. The age of consent in Maryland is 16. Therefore, the State could not move forward on the charges and subsequently moved to drop the charges against the defendant. This action was not done due to an inability to move forward on the evidence. Rather, it is solely done due to a technicality in Maryland's law. We had contacted the legislature in September regarding changing the law to include part-time employees or volunteer coaches at schools."
"Strangely enough, our office had a similar case last September," Fleckenstein continued. "At that time, we discovered that Maryland's current law with regard to teachers and school personnel having inappropriate sexual relationships with students has a major flaw."
