Harriet Sokmensuer, People
A 32-year-old Wisconsin school staffer who sexually abused a 16-year-old student — and told police she was going through “extensive personal issues” in her life at the time — has pleaded guilty.
On Monday, former Green Bay school staffer Courtney Roznowski was sentenced to six months in jail after pleading no contest to one count of exposing intimate parts to a child, Fox11 and WBAY report.
Roznowski was initially charged with three counts of sexual assault of a student by a school staffer and two counts of exposing intimate parts to a child for sexually abusing a 16-year-old student in 2019.
However, the three more serious charges were eventually dropped because the then-31-year-old was not actually a Green Bay School District employee when she had sex with the student, Fox11 reports.
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During her sentencing hearing, Roznowski told the court she had turned her life around since being arrested.
″I know what I did was wrong,” she said, according to Fox11. “While I did not initiate the relationship, I should have put an end to it once I realized that the messages being sent to me were from a student at the school. Please have it in your heart to see the good in me. Have me keep working, have me keep seeing my counselor, have me be around my family daily. Overall, I hope my actions for the last 13 months have shown you how serious I have and will continue to take this.”
However, Judge Donald Zuidmulder called Roznowski ″the nightmare of every parent.”
“You are, frankly, the nightmare of every parent. Because what a parent assumes is that their child is in a safe environment with trusting people. But I have to tell you I am unimpressed by your comments about ‘a good heart.’ You drove over there. It doesn’t have anything to with the heart,” he said.
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Roznowski was arrested in August after Child Protective Services received a tip and initially denied having a sexual relationship with the student, according to a criminal complaint obtained by Action 2 News, Fox11 and the Green Bay Press Gazette.
But when she was asked to hand over her phone, she began to cry, and admitted she had started having sex with the teen in mid-July. She said she initially intended to be the boy’s mentor and that she loved him “in the way [that] I didn’t want to see anything happen to him.”
She told police she was drinking heavily at the time of the relationship.
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When police spoke to the victim, he denied the rumors but said he was aware of allegations of an inappropriate relationship between the pair, saying, “Well, it is every kid’s dream to do a teacher.” He later confirmed the sexual relationship and said Roznowski told him he was “special and deserved special things.”
