A Salem teacher has been charged following a police sting operation after he allegedly tried to meet up with an underage girl for “sex acts.”

Gym and health teacher Darren Benedick, 42, was apparently unaware that the person he was communicating with online was not a 14-year-old girl, but rather an undercover Newbury cop who had been monitoring a “teens-only” chat room.

The teacher at Salem Academy Charter School was arrested by Newbury Police, with help from Salem Police. He was charged with one count of child enticement and one count of dissemination of matter harmful to minors.

“At this time, authorities have no allegations that any students at the school were subject to the defendant’s alleged misconduct,” the Essex DA’s Office said in a statement.

Benedick was arraigned in Newburyport District Court on Wednesday following the sting operation.

“The defendant is alleged to have engaged in online conversations with the undercover officer expressing a desire to meet in person and engage in sexual activities, to have sent an obscene image to the officer, and to have described the sex acts that he wished to perform,” the Essex DA’s Office said.

Benedick made plans to meet the person on Wednesday, and he was taken into custody when he arrived for the intended encounter.

Prosecutors at the arraignment requested cash bail of $50,000 with GPS monitoring, home confinement, and no contact with children. The court set bail at $5,000 and granted the non-monetary terms, including the no contact with children order.

The Essex DA and the police chiefs in Salem and Newbury “advise parents and guardians to engage youth in age-appropriate discussions about proper online and social media behavior, and to encourage them to speak up if they encounter inappropriate contact from an adult.”

During her time in office, the AG has helped create an abortion legal hotline for the state, helped implement the state’s abortion provider shield law, and more.

Shortly after taking office last year, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell created a Reproductive Justice Unit that has worked tirelessly to protect and expand reproductive health, rights and justice. This Unit has focused on eliminating disparities in maternal health, combatting anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers, working across state lines to respond to national attacks on reproductive health care, and defending and enforcing Massachusetts’ strong legal protections for reproductive rights.

“We are doing this work with a hands-on and expert-led approach,” said AG Campbell, the first Black woman to hold statewide office in Massachusetts. Upon taking office, she pledged to “be a national leader in protecting reproductive rights and gender affirming care.”

On June 18, AG Campbell and her Reproductive Justice Unit (headed by Sapna Khatri) convened more than 120 reproductive justice experts at Western New England Law School in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Participants included community organizations, healthcare providers, legal advocates and academics. During a listening session, Campbell heard how her office could better champion reproductive justice on a local, state and national level, particularly with national efforts to roll back these rights. 

“As bodily autonomy is under relentless attack nationwide, Massachusetts is doubling down on its efforts to champion, defend and expand access to sexual and reproductive health care,” said AG Campbell.

Before the convening, Campbell toured Seven Sisters Midwifery and Community Birthing Center in Florence, Massachusetts—the state’s only midwife-owned and operated independent birth center. 

At the convening, Campbell announced the release of five new “Know Your Rights” guides focused on abortion, gender affirming care, contraception, the state shield law and anti-abortion clinics.

“To help ensure that people in Massachusetts know their rights in the confusing and evolving post-Dobbs world, I am glad to release new resources to help people navigate common issues associated with reproductive care,” said AG Campbell.

As one of her first actions in office, AG Campbell worked with Reproductive Equity Now to create the Abortion Legal Hotline—a free and confidential hotline that assists Massachusetts healthcare providers and patients by providing legal advice related to abortion access and care. 

The AG has also led efforts to fully implement and operationalize the state’s abortion provider shield law, including Massachusetts’ first-of-its-kind telehealth provider shield provision, which protects clinicians in the state who serve patients living in states banning abortion. Seven other states have since passed similar telehealth provider shield laws (WA, CO, VT, NY, CA, ME, RI) and four practices—Aid Access, Abuzz, The MAP, and Armadillo Clinic—are now serving over 12,000 women living in ban states each month with telehealth abortion and FDA-approved pills by mail.

AG Campbell has filed amicus briefs with the Supreme Court of the United States to protect access to medication abortion and emergency abortion care, fought to defend access to gender affirming care on behalf of trans youth, and leveraged the tools of her office to address the maternal health crisis in Massachusetts. This is evident in her launching and distributing a $1.5 million maternal health equity grant. AG Campbell’s predecessor, now-Governor Maura Healey, issued a consumer advisory on anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers in July 2022, and the AG has aggressively pursued complaints filed against these centers. 

The reproductive justice convening concluded with a fireside chat between AG Campbell and the nationally renowned reproductive justice activist Loretta J. Ross, now a professor of women’s and gender studies at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Campbell and Ross discussed the history of the reproductive justice movement, the state of reproductive care access today and the government’s role in sustaining long-term systemic change.

“True reproductive justice is all-encompassing and accounts for liberties such as the right to have or not have a child, along with the opportunity to raise children in environments where they can thrive,” said Ross. “Attorney General Campbell is one of few leaders nationwide to use a truly comprehensive and expert-based approach to championing reproductive justice, and it is my deep honor to support her in this work.” 

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Massachusetts spending on the emergency shelter system housing migrant families and local residents has crossed the $700 million threshold, according to data released Monday.

Government budget writers have projected the state will shell out approximately $932 million on the emergency shelter system in fiscal year 2024 and another $915 million in fiscal year 2025, which began on Monday. The massive costs were spurred by an influx of migrants over the past year.

Gov. Maura Healey’s finance and housing offices said the state had spent $715 million on the emergency shelter program as of June 27, though the figure is largely representative of costs through mid-March.

“March invoices are currently being received and processed,” the report said.

As migrants arrived in droves to Massachusetts, the state turned to a network of hotels and motels to increase state-run shelter capacity for families with children and pregnant women. Housing people in those locations can often prove costly, sometimes running $300 a night.

Healey over the past year has approved restrictions on the shelter system, including a nine-month time limit on families’ stay, a 7,500 family cap, a monthly requirement for people in overflow sites to reapply for services, and just last week a prohibition on sleeping overnight at Logan Airport.

At an unrelated event in Lowell Tuesday, Healey said while the state is required to provide families with children and pregnant women with shelter, there is only so much room.

“It’s why I took action this fall to announce the cap and to establish a waiver,” she told reporters. “My position has been, we simply cannot shoulder this. It’s why I also demanded time and time again that Congress step up and act and provide relief to the state.”

Boston, Worcester, Springfield, and Lynn are playing host to the most families in shelters, hotels, and motels of the 351 cities and towns in Massachusetts, according to the report.

About $210 million, or one third of the total money spent, has been paid to shelter providers who run traditional locations as well as the hotels, motels, and overflow sites, according to the report.

Another $24 million has gone to municipalities to help alleviate costs associated with an increased number of students from shelters, the report said. The state has also spent $2.7 million for “additional educational supports” like student transportation and multilingual faculty.

After Healey put a capacity limit on the emergency shelter system, those who applied for services were directed to overflow sites, including at state-owned facilities in Lexington, Roxbury, Chelsea, Cambridge, and Norfolk.

The locations were oftentimes unsuited to house families immediately and the state had to spend money to upgrade the sites. The report released Monday shows officials have spent $1.1 million to make “life safety improvements” at overflow sites.

There were 7,463 families in the emergency shelter system, another 417 at overflow sites, and 699 on the waitlist for placement as of June 27, according to state data and the report.

A separate report released Monday provides an update on an effort to move 400 migrant families out of state-run shelters and into stable housing by the end of the year.

Healey and the state’s eight resettlement agencies inked $10.5 million worth of contracts to stand up the program, which takes a well-known resettlement strategy used at the federal level with humanitarian parolees from Afghanistan and Ukraine and applies it to those in local emergency shelters.

Ascentria Care Alliance committed to helping 75 families in the Worcester and Greater Springfield area move into long-term housing and is expected to receive $1.5 million to do so, the most of the eight organizations, according to the report.

Five other groups contracted to help 50 families and are in line to receive $1 million while Jewish Family Service of Metrowest agreed to assist 25 families and is expected to receive $500,000 to do so, the report said.