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Camryn Zelinger: Teacher Arrested For Allegedly Molesting Female Student

By Tara Dodrill
Published on: 02:49 PST, Feb 9, 2017

Camryn Zelinger, 32, was arrested for allegedly sexting and molesting one of her 14-year-old female students. The married teacher was employed by the Encore High School for Arts in Riverside, California – where she was arrested on Monday.

The female teacher was booked into jail after Riverside police officers were alerted to the sexual molestation claims. The mother of the alleged teacher molestation victim found sexting messages on her daughter’s cellphone, the Daily Mail reports. The mother called the police and reported what she believes is a months-long intimate relationship between the Encore High School for the Arts teacher and her teenage daughter.

The Encore High School for Arts teacher was charged with suspicion of lewd or lascivious acts with a minor and annoying or molesting a child under 18.

During an interview with KTLA, the unnamed mother detailed the shock she felt after reading the multitude of sexting messages allegedly sent by Camryn Zelinger to her daughter.

“I’m a nosy mother. I grabbed her phone and I looked at texts from this teacher, sexting my baby over the phone, over the texts – just all this stuff,” the alleged victim’s mother said.

Via a statement by the family attorney, relatives said they are “disturbed” by suggestions the relationship between the 14-year-old girl and the teacher was either voluntary or consensual.

“This teacher used her position of power and trust to sort of manipulate this child into doing things that this child thought she had to do,” the attorney said.

Riverside police investigators reportedly found there had been both inappropriate communications and inappropriate physical contact between the female teacher and her student. The law enforcement officials also confirmed one of the ways the teacher and her student communicated was via text messages.

“I would like parents to know, pay attention to your children when they say something is going on or with their emotions, with their actions,” the mother also said during the same interview. “If they come and tell you, ‘My teacher touched me this way or this way,’ don’t brush it off, listen to them.”

Camryn Zelinger only recently married her husband. The female teacher reportedly has an active Twitter account where she shared photos of herself and her new spouse. A myriad of students also shared photos of themselves with the teacher during school events and in images that appear to be from field trips.

“The way she is and the way she interacts with the children, you would never suspect. You would never think she would do something like that,” Encore High School for the Arts parent, Tiffany Florez, said.

The mother of the alleged molestation victim said she knew something was wrong even before she discovered the sexting messages from the female teacher.

“She wouldn’t tell me, she was too afraid. She kept saying, ‘Nothing, mom, nothing, mom,'” the mother said when detailing a past conversation when she had asked her daughter if something was bothering her.

Eventually, the 14-year-old student told her mother the female teacher had been molesting her “first period, eighth period, all throughout the day” while she was at the California performing arts high school.

The female teacher allegedly sent notes to other educators requesting them to allow the 14-year-old girl out of their class to come to her room for various reasons in a covert attempt to spend more time one-on-one with the teenager.

According to Riverside police officers, the Encore High School for Arts is fully cooperating with the teacher molestation investigation. Camryn Zelinger is now no longer employed by the school. The facility serves students in grades seven through 12.

Zelinger’s LinkedIn profile indicates she had previously taught at Lola Mae Performing Arts and the Orange County School of the Arts. The female teacher accused of molestation also reportedly acted at the Chance Theater in Anaheim.

[Featured Image by Sheikoevgeniya/Shutterstock]

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