The Iowa Supreme Court ruled four to three to uphold a former teacher’s sexual exploitation conviction on Friday. (Photo via Canva; seal courtesy of the Iowa Supreme Court)
The Iowa Supreme Court upheld a former high school teacher’s conviction for sexual exploitation by a school employee in a 4-3 split decision released Friday.
Kari Jean Schwartz was an art teacher in 2009 at Independence High School, where she had repeated inappropriate interactions with a female student referred to as A.S. in court documents.
Schwartz confronted A.S. one day about why the student was being quiet and withdrawn in class, according to court documents. Schwartz guided A.S. to the stairwell, where the student sat down on a step and Schwartz sat on the step immediately behind her. Schwartz then held A.S. in a “bear hug” and began to sexually assault the student, court records state.
“Schwartz wrapped one arm around her face and the other ‘kind of down towards [A.S.’s] hip,’ proceeded to move her hand above A.S.’s ‘clothes to the chest’ and then ‘down to [A.S.’s] pants line,’ and ‘went below [A.S.’s] clothing towards [her] pubic area,’” according to A.S. in the court documents.
Schwartz only stopped when two students began walking up the stairs as Schwartz and A.S. were at the top, according to court documents.
A.S. eventually reported the incident to police in 2020. Schwartz would later be convicted in district court and sentenced to five years in prison and a special 10-year sentence. Schwartz appealed her conviction to the Iowa Court of Appeals and later the Iowa Supreme Court.
Her appeal claimed her case was prejudiced by the jury being mistakenly instructed that hugs are a form of sexual conduct and by the exclusion from evidence of the initial findings of a school investigation. She also argued there was insufficient evidence that her behavior elicited a pattern of sexual conduct.
Records: Conduct included ‘chest-to-chest’ hugs
According to court documents, Schwartz’s interactions with A.S. began as a normal teacher-student relationship but after the first month, A.S. noticed Schwartz giving her an unusual amount of attention.
Schwartz would talk to A.S.’s table in the classroom more than others, go to other teachers’ rooms to talk to A.S., repeatedly compliment A.S.’s appearance, give “chest-to-chest” hugs and invite herself to places outside of school where she knew A.S. was, which once included A.S.’s home, court records state.
Following a series of texts to the student where she said she loved her, Schwartz sent two emails detailing how the student could always tell her anything.
“I am probably not suppose[d] to love my students, but I do you,” Schwartz said in an email sent to A.S., according to court documents.
At the time, A.S. printed out and reported the emails to a teacher who promised to send them to the principal. The incident at the stairwell came shortly after reporting the emails.
While A.S. did report the emails to the school, she never told anyone at the time about what happened in the stairwell, according to court records.
During the school’s investigation, Schwartz admitted to texting, emailing and hugging A.S. more than once, according to court documents. Schwartz left her position at the school shortly after the investigation began.
The court wrote that the findings of this investigation were not “wrongly excluded” from the case as the conclusions from it were unclear.
In 2018, A.S. emailed the school district where Schwartz worked at the time to warn them to fully investigate any complaints made against Schwartz. Two years later, A.S. said she finally had the courage to “do what should have been done 9 years ago” and report Schwartz’s sexual abuse of her to the police.
A.S. said after learning Schwartz was teaching middle school special education at a new school, she felt a “little responsible” for never having reported Schwartz.
Arguments focused on hugging
The Iowa Supreme Court majority disagreed that the trial judge had wrongly included hugging in a list of sexual conduct. Schwartz argued that unlike other examples of sexual conduct, hugging requires context to determine whether the conduct was sexual.
The majority opinion stated that the law and the disputed jury instruction “provide that sexual conduct includes touching of the ‘clothed or unclothed inner thigh, breast, groin, buttock, anus, pubes, or genitals.’ But one can imagine a variety of circumstances (responding to a medical issue at school, treatment of an athlete, patting a player on the backside upon entering or exiting a game) where the other identified acts are not sexual in nature. In other words, almost all the listed acts are sexual in nature only when considered in context.”
The majority of justices found that even if the jury instruction was incorrect, it was not enough to overturn the conviction.
“This court will not reverse the jury’s verdict unless the error was prejudicial,” Iowa Supreme Court Judge Christopher McDonald wrote for the majority.
The dissenting opinions agreed with the majority on all the facts of the case except for how prejudicial the jury instruction was.
“I am not convinced that the record before us affirmatively establishes that this instructional error did not prejudice the defendant,” Iowa Supreme Court Chief Justice Susan Christensen wrote. Justices Edward Mansfield and Thomas Waterman joined the dissent.
“I agree that Schwartz at a minimum used poor judgment and had inappropriate communications with A.S. But the case came down to hugs and the touching incident on the stairwell. Schwartz admitted hugging A.S., but she insisted that she was merely attempting to comfort A.S. through these hugs or posing for pictures at the prompting of others,” Christensen wrote. “When A.S. was interviewed by police in 2020, she said that the hugs did not feel sexual in nature. Thus, there was evidence the hugs were nonsexual.”
Christensen also pointed out that there was conflicting testimony about the incident in the stairwell and “the jury could have found reasonable doubt as to whether the sexual touching on the stairwell occurred, while finding that the hugging took place.”
She added, “Having been told that the hugging was per se sexual conduct under Iowa law, i.e., that it was no different from kissing and touching the genital area, the jury could have concluded that Schwartz committed sexual exploitation without determining beyond a reasonable doubt that Schwartz’s hugging was actually sexual in nature.”
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