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 News from Around the Americas | November 2007 
Boy: Friendship With Teacher Led to Sex
 Elliot Spagat – Associated Press
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| | Teacher Kelsey Peterson and student Fernando Rodriguez. (AP) |
Janitzio, Mexico — The 13-year-old who fled from Nebraska with a middle school teacher told The Associated Press their friendship led to sex and a rambling journey to nowhere that now has them both facing fates they never wanted.
The boy, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, might not ever be able to return to the U.S., the country he considers home. The 25-year-old teacher, Kelsey Peterson, is in a California jail on charges of crossing state lines with the intention of having sex with a minor.
Their trip began nearly two weeks ago in Lexington, Neb., about 200 miles west of Omaha, where the boy, now in eighth grade, left with his sixth-grade teacher. He watched movies on a DVD player while she drove west to California, then south to Mexico.
The boy said the trip was Peterson's idea, but he went along with it. He had told her he wanted to visit his birthplace in Penjamo, a town in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato, where his father lives.
"I had problems in Lexington and I wanted to get away, but it was a bad idea," he said Tuesday. "Now I can't go back."
The boy said he had sex with the teacher while they were in Lexington, a meatpacking town that has seen a large influx of Mexican immigrants.
"It didn't happen that many times," he said. "It happened maybe twice, I think."
The boy spoke on the patio of a family friend's house in this small farming village south of the California state line. The family took him in after Mexican authorities found him and Peterson on Friday at a mall parking lot in the nearby border city of Mexicali.
The boy spoke flawless English; his Spanish is limited. He occasionally pulled a cell phone from his pocket.
The AP had previously named the boy but later removed his name because the most recent charges allege he was the victim of a sex crime.
The boy called his former teacher "my best friend" but said she wasn't his girlfriend.
"I could tell her anything," he said. "She would listen."
The Mexican official who captured the pair with the aid of a GPS-enabled cell phone said the boy shed no tears while Peterson wept as the two parted Friday night at the police station.
"She said to the youngster that she loved him and would always love him in her heart," said Alfredo Arenas Moreno of the Baja California state police.
Arenas said the woman admitted having a sexual relationship with the boy but felt it was unfair that she would be branded a predator and separated from her 8-year-old daughter.
"She said her life was basically over, but if she had a chance to do things differently she wouldn't," he told the AP.
Arenas said the boy had no money and no identification, but Peterson had $400. The trunk of the car was loaded with clothes, toiletries, blankets, pillows, bottled water, photos of Peterson's family and Disney DVDs.
"They basically didn't have a plan," he said. "They were living day to day."
The boy said they drove 1,300 miles to Riverside, Calif., outside Los Angeles, to see relatives but they couldn't find anyone because they had no phone numbers or addresses. He said they made a short trip to a beach, where he swam in the ocean.
"She wanted to see the beach, I guess, because she had never seen it," he said.
From there, they drove through San Diego to Tijuana, Mexico, then about 120 miles east to Mexicali, staying at hotels throughout the trip. A phone call by the pair to the boy's uncle in Yuma, Ariz., led to the capture.
The boy said he would likely return to Penjamo on Saturday after his mother sends the airfare.
He would rather live in the United States, where he shared a home with his mother, her boyfriend and two U.S.-born brothers, ages 1 and 16. He doesn't remember exactly when he left Mexico — perhaps in second grade — first for Riverside, then for Nebraska.
"Life is harder (in Mexico)" he said. "I really don't know anything here."
A U.S. Embassy official in Mexico City said the boy could return to Nebraska to testify under a tourist or business visa. The boy said he would testify if asked.
"Runaway Teacher" Faces Court Date
CBS/AP
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Lexington, Neb. - A middle school teacher accused of running away to Mexico with a 13-year-old boy when rumors started to swirl that they were having sex was due in court to begin facing charges, three days after the pair was found.
Kelsey Peterson, 25, and Fernando Rodriguez, the subjects of a weeklong search, were taken into custody Friday without incident in Mexicali, Mexico, after the boy's relatives told police he had called home asking for money.
Peterson, a sixth-grade math teacher and basketball coach at Lexington Middle School, was turned over to FBI agents early Saturday. She was being held on federal charges at the Imperial County Jail in El Centro, Calif., and was scheduled to appear before a U.S. magistrate judge.
Authorities in Mexico said Fernando told police of vague but romantic plans with Peterson to scrap normal teenage life for a life of hiding in southern or central Mexico. Investigators have said they have recovered e-mails and letters in which they both express affection.
"The judge will advise Ms. Peterson of the charge (allegation) against her and her specific rights," FBI Special Agent Darrell Foxworth in San Diego said in a statement Sunday. He said there was no immediate indication if she had a lawyer to comment for her.
I don't know, I just like being around her. She's just cool.
Fernando RodriguezPeterson is charged in Nebraska with kidnapping, child abuse and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. She also faces federal charges of transporting a minor across state lines or a foreign border for sexual activity, U.S. Attorney Joe Stecher said.
A boy who identified himself as Fernando when an Omaha World-Herald reporter contacted him Sunday on his cell phone denied having a sexual relationship with Peterson.
"I don't know, I just like being around her," Fernando said. "She's just cool."
The newspaper reports Peterson and Rodriguez left Nebraska a day after the Lexington school district placed her on administrative leave and confiscated her computer. School officials had received a complaint alleging a sexual relationship between Peterson and a student.
Stecher said he would work with Dawson County Attorney Elizabeth Waterman to decide in which jurisdiction she would face charges.
Fernando was turned over to relatives in Mexico. He was an illegal immigrant while residing in the United States, and might not be able to return to the rural Nebraska town between North Platte and Kearney on Interstate 80, where he was an eighth-grader.
The news media generally do not identify people who may be victims of sex crimes, but the boy's name had been widely publicized as police searched for him.
Fernando said he is staying with his uncle now, but wants to return to his parents and the U.S.
Fernando's family agreed with authorities to send him to the family's home town in Mexico's southern state of Guanajuato to be near his grandmother, uncles and father, said one uncle, Pedro Raya.
"They think that's the best thing they can do for Fernando," said Raya, 47, of Yuma, Ariz. "They're probably not going to be able to (visit) because of the status, because of the family's status."
A seventh-grader at Lexington Middle School, Gage Timson, said he knew Fernando through friends and hung out with him a couple of times. He also described Peterson as "kinda cool sometimes" - although she could be strict when kids got in trouble.
"I thought that she kidnapped him, but there's rumors all over, and I don't know which ones are true," said Gage, 12, as he took a break from skateboarding in a park across the street from Lexington High School.
Alfredo Arenas, the Baja California state police official who detained Peterson, said the pair had a mutual agreement to flee after stories surfaced that they were having sex surfaced.
Peterson's family and co-workers tell the World-Herald they had warned her several times that her relationship with the boy was inappropriate. She has been teaching at the school for four years, and is a 2000 graduate of Lexington High School. She was described as a popular and smart kid, but she had a child out of wedlock her junior year in high school.
The Associated Press contributed to this report. |
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