While many Granite Staters may have been shocked by the story of a Claremont Middle School teacher arrested last week for violating a restraining order protecting a 14-year-old boy, the story has been public information for months in this working-class community.
In fact, the teacher, 38-year-old Erin Mullen, attempted to take custody of the student months ago. And yet she continued to teach in the local public school.
Mullen has been the subject of an ongoing police investigation for alleged sexual misconduct, but she kept her job until her arrest last week.
SAU 6 officials won’t say when they actually learned there was something amiss with Mullen and the boy she is accused of stalking. Superintendent Chris Pratt and School Board Chair Heather Whitney both declined to respond to NHJournal’s requests for comment on Tuesday.
Mullen was arrested Wednesday about an hour after she was served with a court order to stay away from the boy. The officer who served her the order spotted Mullen talking to the boy at the Claremont Community Center, across the street from the middle school, that same afternoon, according to police.
The boy’s mother, who NHJournal is not naming at this time in order to protect her son’s identity, declined to speak when contacted on Tuesday. The mother is a military veteran who was working multiple jobs last summer when Mullen began grooming the boy, according to the stalking petition, telling the mother she wanted to take the boy “under her wing.”
Mullen’s own mother told police her daughter was “obsessed” with the boy, and she believed Mullen had done something “inappropriate” to him, according to the petition.
“She is going to mess that kid’s mind,” Mullen’s mother reportedly told police.
Mullen’s relationship included out-of-state trips to Atlantic City and New York City with the student during the summer. Mullen, who has children of her own, did not bring her children on those trips, according to the petition. By the end of the summer, the boy was spending nights with Mullen at her Springfield, Vt. house and refusing to go home, his mother states.
When the boy’s mother sought help from Claremont Police to get her son back, Mullen went to court and filed an emergency petition to take guardianship of the boy. Mullen did not show up for that hearing and was, therefore, not granted custody.
But she pulled the same stunt again in November, filing another emergency petition to legally take the boy away from his mother, according to the stalking petition. Mullen did show up for that hearing, and so did a representative from the Claremont Police Department. That was when police disclosed in open court Mullen was being investigated for “inappropriate sexual contact.”
Law enforcement agencies, as a rule, do not disclose the fact of an open investigation into any individual unless there is a safety concern.
At that point, the boy’s mother got to keep her son. More problematic was the fact that Mullen got to keep her job working with children. It is unclear if police formally told school administrators about the ongoing investigation at that point after making the disclosure in court. Since the November hearing, Mullen has not been charged with sexual misconduct.
Mullen was finally placed on leave after her arrest last week for violating the stalking order, and then fired sometime between the arrest last Wednesday and Monday of this week. Pratt on Monday announced Mullen’s “immediate termination,” though his statement does not specify when, exactly, she was terminated.
Claremont is a small town where it’s hard to hide a controversy for long. Claremont Middle School has about 400 students and 50 teachers and staffers. Pratt, Whitley, and the rest of the school district administration are free to speak out, if they choose, and clarify what they were told and when about the Mullen investigation,
The question many are asking is what did school administrators and staff know about Mullen’s behavior and when did they know it?
EDITOR’S NOTE: An earlier version of this article misreported the name of SAU6 Board Member Heather Whitney. We regret the error.
