A Lange Park teacher, who faced a charge of sex­u­al­ly touch­ing a child, was freed on Fri­day af­ter the child's moth­er tes­ti­fied that the on­go­ing court pro­ceed­ings had tak­en a se­vere men­tal toll on her daugh­ter.

The case, which was be­fore the Ch­agua­nas Dis­trict Court, in­volved al­le­ga­tions that the teacher had in­ap­pro­pri­ate­ly touched the then 11-year-old girl dur­ing pri­vate lessons at his home be­tween April 30 and Ju­ly 1, 2023.

The pros­e­cu­tion had al­leged that the ac­cused mas­saged the child's breasts, arms, legs, and shoul­ders.

The pros­e­cu­tion had com­piled a to­tal of 13 wit­ness state­ments, in­clud­ing three from the al­leged vic­tim, two from her moth­er, and one from her grand­moth­er. The mat­ter was set to pro­ceed by way of a Pre­lim­i­nary En­quiry on Fri­day.

De­fence at­tor­ney Kevin Rati­ram re­quest­ed that four of the pros­e­cu­tion's wit­ness­es be made avail­able for cross-ex­am­i­na­tion: the child, her moth­er, her grand­moth­er, and the charg­ing of­fi­cer, Woman Po­lice Con­sta­ble Avion Fos­ter.

How­ev­er, when the case was called vir­tu­al­ly be­fore Dis­trict Court Judge Maris­sa Gomez, the po­lice pros­e­cu­tor ad­vised the court that the State in­tend­ed to pur­sue a par­tic­u­lar course of ac­tion. She pro­ceed­ed to lead ev­i­dence from the child’s moth­er, who told the court that her daugh­ter had been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing anx­i­ety and emo­tion­al dis­tress due to the on­go­ing pro­ceed­ings. She al­so said her daugh­ter’s aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance had de­clined as a re­sult, and both of them no longer wished to con­tin­ue with the case.

Fol­low­ing the moth­er’s tes­ti­mo­ny, the pros­e­cu­tor closed the State’s case and of­fered no fur­ther ev­i­dence.

In re­sponse, Rati­ram sub­mit­ted that the ev­i­dence be­fore the court failed to sat­is­fy the le­gal re­quire­ments to es­tab­lish the of­fence. He ad­vanced a no-case sub­mis­sion, ar­gu­ing that the es­sen­tial el­e­ments of the charge had not been made out.

Af­ter re­view­ing the mat­ter, Gomez up­held the no-case sub­mis­sion. She ruled that the charge against the teacher be dis­charged and in­formed him that he was free to leave. The de­ci­sion brought the year-long mat­ter to a close.