An Alabama theater teacher charged with trying to solicit sex with a ten-year-old has resigned and been banned from all city school campuses.
Authorities arrested Joshua Feemster, 33, earlier this month on the charge of electronic solicitation of a child. He taught at Huntsville’s Academy for Academics and Arts Middle School.
The teacher was busted in an online investigation by Huntsville police where Feemster allegedly believed he would be meeting with a child when the encounter was part of a sting by an undercover officer.
The school system says Feemster has resigned effective Sept. 30. He had been placed on leave since his arrest.
“The safety of our students is our highest priority, and our schools remain focused on providing a safe and supportive learning environment for all students,” Huntsville City Schools said in a statement.
Feemster is out on a $15,000 bond and set for a court hearing at the end of the month, Fox 54 reported.
According to that outlet:
Feemster has played a leading role in the AAA arts program. In 2023, the school was named a Premiere Community for Theatre Education for its outstanding commitment in the field by the Educational Theatre Association.
“Receiving this designation will help our students, program, and school to continue to develop and be a leader for theatre education in the state of Alabama,” Feemster said of the honor. “We are proud to be the first Theatre program in the state to receive this distinction and one of the few elementary & middle schools.”
The district’s action of securing his resignation and banning him from campuses comes in the wake of the Trump administration’s crackdown on what researchers call “educator sexual misconduct.”
As Breitbart News has been reporting all year, sexual exploitation of students by teachers has been “rampant” the past two decades, leading experts say, making it one of the most persistent and destructive trends in K-12 education.
Districts large and small, public and private, urban and rural, and from the north and the south, have been plagued by the epidemic, with cases making headlines on a weekly basis around the U.S.
Experts believe one of the factors contributing to the trend is the ability of teachers and students to communicate secretly online, which gives exploitative teachers the ability to groom vulnerable students into sexual relationships.
Announcement of the new Trump crackdown earlier this month comes following a blistering “Dear Colleague” letter sent out to U.S. school districts by ED Secretary Linda McMahon last month, which was obtained by Breitbart News.
McMahon cites the epidemic being enabled by “institutional silence and complacency” by school districts and teachers’ unions being committed “to shield their members from disciplinary actions.”
McMahon called such practices a failure of their “moral and legal responsibilities to parents and students.”
The new effort appears particularly focused on what is known as “passing the trash” — the act of concealing sexual offenses and assigning the teacher to another school or recommending him or her as a good hire in another district.
The education department has begun investigating school districts that don’t appear to be complying with certain federal laws, Breitbart News reported.
“This epidemic of nationwide sexual abuse in our schools must end,” McMahon said when announcing the effort.
Breitbart contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the author of the New York Times true crime best seller House of Secrets , which documents one of the worst cases of child sex abuse in U.S. history, and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
