A teacher has pleaded guilty after ‘preying’ on a student when he was just 11 and sexually abusing him over four years.
Laura Caron, 36, then gave birth to the student’s child in 2019, when she was 28 and he was 13.
Caron, a fifth-grade teacher and basketball coach at Middle Township Elementary School #2, met the child after teaching his older sister.
His parents noticed their daughter was excelling under Caron’s mentorship and wanted the same for their son.
She grew close to the family, befriending his mother and even being allowed to sleep overnight.
But beyond taking the children to basketball practices and assisting them with homework, Caron was secretly sexually assaulting the boy, having fallen pregnant while staying at their home full-time.
Caron kept teaching after giving birth to her daughter, and for years, no one suspected the baby belonged to the teenage boy until December 2024, when his father saw a photo of her as a toddler.
Having noticed a profound likeness to his own son and posted as such on Facebook, the school’s superintendent contacted authorities, and DNA evidence linked the boy with the little girl.
The teacher had initially told friends at a baby shower that the father was ‘out of the picture’.
Caron was arrested in January 2025, and she’s now facing five years in prison.
This week, she pleaded guilty to second-degree endangering the welfare of a child with sexual conduct at a court in Cape May, New Jersey.
Terms of her plea arrangement include up to five years in state prison, losing her teaching license, registering as a sex offender, and being under parole supervision for life.
Originally, last August, ahead of the plea deal, Caron faced a minimum of 10 years and a maximum of 40 years behind bars if convicted of child sexual assault.
She is now required to undergo assessment at the Adult Diagnostic and Treatment Center, which the Cape May County Prosecutor’s Office said will determine whether her actions are classified as repetitive and/or compulsive, which could impact her sentence.
Caron will be sentenced on January 8.
Meanwhile, the student, now in his early 20s, previously insisted he loves Caron and ‘wasn’t groomed’ by her.
‘They need to drop all charges. I wasn’t groomed or raped or manipulated by her. She never initiated anything,’ he told the Daily Mail last February.
Calling the allegations ‘crazy’, he said he ‘started everything’, and if it were his decision, ‘she wouldn’t be in jail’.
He added that he wasn’t allowed contact with his child while the case moved through the court as part of Caron’s bail conditions.
‘I can’t talk to them. I wish I could, but I can’t, and it sucks.’
He even blamed his father for the fallout: ‘All of this started with a Facebook post from my father. I didn’t want her violated like that.’
Declaring he loves Caron ‘with all [his] heart’, he confirmed he is estranged from his father.
‘This stuff is so deep. Like, the world has no idea what she has done for my family.’
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
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