North Carolina Attorney General reacts to former NHCS band teacher sentenced for sex crimes

WILMINGTON, N.C. (WECT) – While you drop your youngsters off at college every morning, security is high of thoughts.

For greater than 20 years, former Roland-Grise Center Faculty Band Director Peter Frank fashioned intimate and sexual relationships with a few of his college students.

“What we wish to know as mother and father in North Carolina is that when our youngsters go to highschool, little league, summer time camp, once they’re on-line with their buddies, that they’re secure. That’s a very powerful job now we have as adults,” stated North Carolina Lawyer Basic Josh Stein.

Frank was sentenced Tuesday to spend a minimum of the following 50 years in jail for 29 fees of intercourse crimes involving his college students. Prices present these crimes occurred between 1998 and 2019 throughout most of Frank’s tenure at Roland-Grise.

Throughout final month’s trial, three of Frank’s victims got here ahead to share their tales of their relationships with Frank, portray the image of a person they thought they may belief as he tried to develop into intimate with them.

“When somebody has been abused the best way that these youngsters have been, it takes quite a lot of work and time to work via these points, and generally you by no means get totally to the opposite aspect,” Stein stated. “However what I pray is that this verdict and the sentence will give them some hope, one thing to springboard and advance their therapeutic.”

Martin Ramey is representing Frank’s victims in a civil lawsuit. He says there’s extra work to be completed to guard youngsters and college students in New Hanover County.

“Now we have to pay extra consideration to peoples complaints, now we have to analyze extra, and now we have to take the problem of childhood sexual abuse in our faculties extra severely,” stated Ramey.

Stein says the work to carry little one predators accountable begins with passing legal guidelines that embody mandated reporting. Comparable bipartisan laws was labored on final yr.

“There’s all the time going to be work,” Stein stated. “We will’t want away the truth that there are deranged, harmful people who find themselves out to harm others. So, what now we have to do is strengthen our legal guidelines in order that they shield us to the utmost degree potential after which, when there are wrongdoers, we maintain them accountable.”

A civil trial towards Frank and the New Hanover County Board of Schooling is ready for trial early subsequent yr. A separate civil trial involving the victims of former trainer Mike Kelly is ready for this September.

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