EAST HARTFORD — A former middle school school drama teacher had an obsessive and inappropriate relationship with a 13-year-old boy, calling him more than 100 times in a span of eight months and sending him photos of herself while on vacation, according to an arrest warrant released Thursday.
East Hartford police arrested Karen Vinick, 34, and charged her with risk of injury to a minor. Vinick was released on a $150,000 bond and is due in court on Nov. 22.
Vinick was a teacher at the Capitol Region Education Council’s Academy of Computer Science and Engineering Middle School, which was formerly known as Two Rivers Magnet School.
Vinick was placed on administrative leave when the investigation began and resigned prior to the start of this school year, CREC Superintendent Timothy J. Sullivan Jr. said in a statement.
“CREC has fully cooperated with authorities from the moment we were made aware of the situation,” Sullivan said. “The employee was immediately placed on administrative leave when the investigation began and resigned from CREC before this school year. CREC’s priority is always the safety and well-being of our students and staff.”
The school’s principal, Jill Wnuk, alerted police after two teachers brought concerns to her about Vinick’s behavior with the student during a drama club sleepover at the school on May 21, the warrant stated.
The teachers said they saw Vinick and the boy sleeping under the same blanket on the floor of the school’s great hall, police said. Surveillance camera footage confirmed the teachers’ account, police said. The video did not show any obvious sexual activity, but at one point in the middle of the night, Vinick and the boy left the hall and went into a classroom together, the warrant stated.
The boy told investigators “nothing physical” happened at the sleepover, but said Vinick had declared her love for him two months earlier, the warrant stated. The boy said Vinick told him she “did not see him as a student and saw him more as someone she was interested in and liked in a romantic sense,” the warrant stated.
The boy said Vinick called and texted him and made excuses to visit his home after school hours, police said. At the time, the warrant says, Vinick was married to a man who was in the traveling troupe performing the musical “Hamilton.”
“The victim stated that Mrs. Vinick made sure not to cross any lines between them and did nothing physical with him,” but he ended the relationship in June because he wanted her “to realize that it was wrong,” the warrant stated.
The last time he spoke with Vinick was June 9 after the state Department of Children and Families opened its own investigation, police said. The boy said Vinick told him “if he didn’t want this to go public, their best course of action would be to deny anything happened,” the warrant stated.
The victim’s mother handed over his phone to investigators, police said. The call log showed 135 calls from Vinick to the boy from Nov. 3, 2021 to June 8, police said. The boy apparently deleted messages, police said, because he spoke about Vinick sending him photos while she was on vacation, but they were not in the thread, police said.
Vinick’s lawyer told police she declined to be interviewed, the warrant stated.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify the school is now called the Academy of Computer Science and Engineering Middle School.
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