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Claremont school officials have known for months that Claremont Middle School teacher Erin Mullen was under investigation for sexual misconduct with a student, yet allowed her to teach anyway.

Mullen, 38, was arrested last week for stalking the 14-year-old boy she repeatedly tried to take from his family, according to court records. On Wednesday, SAU 6 Superintendent Chris Pratt told NHJournal Mullen was suspended in the fall after allegations of her inappropriate behavior became known. But, Pratt said, Mullen was allowed back in the classroom because she had obtained custody of the boy through an emergency court order.

SAU 6 Superintendent Chris Pratt

“The school was made aware of the initial allegations and she was placed on administrative leave for an extended period of time until the police investigation was completed. She was brought back as a teacher only after the courts gave her temporary guardianship of the student,” Pratt said.

But did Mullen have legal guardianship of the teen? The answer isn’t clear, and  Pratt did not respond to follow up questions about his statement, which is at odds with what NHJournal has learned from court records and speaking with people involved. 

For instance, Anthony DiPadova, the lawyer representing the boy’s mother, told NHJournal that Mullen never meaningfully had guardianship of the boy. Both her attempts to take the boy through court order failed.

“What’s [Pratt is] talking about was dismissed,” DiPadova said. 

The school placed Mullen on leave around October and conducted its own investigation, DiPadova said. That only happened after the boy’s mother and DiPadova complained about the situation to school and district officials several times.

As far as DiPadova understands, the decision to bring Mullen back into the classroom was made after the school’s internal investigation cleared her.

“They apparently didn’t believe anything was going on,” DiPadova said.

Claremont Police Sgt. Trevor Dickerman told NHJournal school officials knew in November, when Mullen was put back to work, that the criminal investigation was still ongoing. Dickerman said SAU 6 officials made the decision to reinstate Mullen based on their own internal conversations, and not input from police.

“They informed us, and they had put in place a number of stipulations on her,” Dickerman said. 

The district restricted Mullen from speaking to the boy in the school building, but she reportedly sought him out after school most days at the Claremont Savings Bank Community Center located across the street from the school.

Mullen has been working in the school uninterrupted since November, until her arrest last week. That’s despite Police Chief Brent Wilmot telling a family court judge in November about the ongoing investigation into alleged sexual misconduct, and the judge stating, “I have serious concerns about Ms. Mullen’s judgment, perception of the situation, and stability.”

DiPadova said Mullen had originally been barred from talking to the boy earlier in the fall via a no contact order, but she violated that order sometime in October. 

The full court file on the stalking petition includes disturbing details, like Mullen advising the boy on how best to poison his mother. Mullen’s mother, Noreen Harvey, reportedly told police, DiPadova, and his paralegal that Mullen was obsessed with the boy.

“Erin told (the boy) that he should (give his mother rat poison) in small doses, and not in one big clump,” Harvey said, according to the stalking petition filed in court.

Harvey also told police and the legal team Mullen had the boy spending nights in her bedroom at her Springfield, Vermont home. Harvey believes something “inappropriate” had occurred. 

Mullen has been communicating with the boy via social media apps and through his X-Box account, but evidence has since surfaced that she was deleting messages during the investigation, according to the petition. Police still have a five-page handwritten note from Mullen to the boy in which she refers to him as “Babes,” according to the petition.

The teen’s mother, a military veteran, and single mom is afraid Mullen won’t stop until she takes the boy away from her. The mother’s nightmare started in the summer when Mullen offered to mentor the boy as the mom was stressed working multiple jobs.

Mullen started taking the boy out of state for overnight trips alone, according to the petition, and keeping the boy at her house in Vermont overnight. The mother went to the police when Mullen would not send her boy home at the end of the summer. That prompted Mullen to file for an emergency guardianship order. The emergency order was initially granted but soon after dismissed because Mullen failed to appear in court for the subsequent hearing. 

According to the petition, Mullen filed another emergency guardianship petition almost immediately after the missed hearing but was denied. Instead, the judge ordered a full guardianship hearing, which took place on Nov. 22. This is the hearing where Wilmot disclosed the investigation and Mullen was again denied custody of the boy.

DiPadova said the mother was forced to seek a stalking petition after not being able to rely on the school to keep Mullen away from her son. The stalking order was granted last week, and Mullen was served with it on Wednesday afternoon. She allegedly violated the petition within an hour, seeking the boy out again at the community center.

Pratt announced Monday that Mullen had been “immediately terminated” following her arrest. 

The whole community is owed an explanation from Pratt and other school officials why Mullen was allowed to continue allegedly grooming the boy despite several red flags, and why she was allowed to be around other children in the middle school, DiPadova said.

“We’ve all got a lot of questions about how they handled this,” DiPadova said.

Wilmot told NHJournal this week the investigation into Mullen is still ongoing, though he declined to discuss possible criminal charges that could result.

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.