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Pennsylvania teacher convicted in sex with student case (Includes interview and first-hand account)

Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Edward Borkowski rejected a request from the teacher’s lawyer Christoper Urbano to have the charges dismissed, claiming the law is unconstitutional because it is vague, and wasn’t meant to prohibit the type of conduct that the teacher admitted she engaged in with the student.

According to a court document and a police report, the student, then a senior at North Allegheny High School in Pittsburgh, said he waited until he turned 18 last April before he told Megan Batykefer 32, of Pittsburgh, that he had romantic feelings for her.

“I knew it would have been wrong to say anything to her before I turned 18,” the student told police and also testified to at a preliminary hearing in January.

Also, “Batykefer thought there would be no legal issue after [the student] turned 18,” a police officer wrote in his report after speaking with her last July.

“Had this relationship taken place in a university setting we wouldn’t be here now, “ Urbano argued in closing arguments last Thursday.

According to the report, Batykefer told detectives that besides being the student’s rowing coach, she came to know him when she attended his brother’s wedding.

Telling police that the student was “distraught over [a] failed relationship with a girlfriend, Batykefer was consoling [the student] in regard to this relationship,” the report said.

The relationship, according to what Batykefer told police, consisted of texting back-and-forth and engaging in sexual activity, mostly at her house “less than a dozen times” police said.

At first Batykefer said she told the student that she didn’t want to have sex, however “about two weeks after his initial request she ‘stopped saying no’” the report said.

Urbano told Judge Borkowski during the trial, “He pursued her your honor.”

The student was seen going into Batykefer’s hotel room while the two were attending a rowing competition in Philadelphia last July.

After being urged by members of the team’s rowing board, the pair drove back to Pittsburgh the next morning in the team van, the report said.

The following day members of the team’s rowing board notified a school official, who in turn called the police.

In Pennsylvania it is illegal for a school employee, coach or volunteer to have any type of sexual contact with a student, even if the student is over 18.

Batykefer was paid $2,155 to coach the men’s rowing team for the season according to a contract she signed last February.

Prior to coaching, Batykefer taught Latin at a high school just north of Pittsburgh. She resigned for personal reasons in December 2012 according to an email from a school official.

Online records show that Batykefer has surrendered her state teaching license.

Batykefer was convicted of one count of institutional sexual assault, a third-degree felony. She remains free on her own recognizance while she awaits a presentence report and undergoes a court-ordered mental health evaluation. The former coach is currently receiving mental health care Urbano told Judge Borkowski today.

No sentencing date has been set.

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