Teacher’s aide gets probation

Kim Smith

Thursday, June 27, 2002 | 9:35 a.m.

A 40-year-old former teacher's aide was placed on three years' probation Wednesday after the boy with whom she had an affair pleaded with the judge to keep her out of jail.

"She's a mother of three and she takes care of her mother," the 17-year-old boy told District Judge Donald Mosley. "I hope you'll give her probation."

Carolyn Wilson could have received as much as 12 years in prison after pleading guilty in April to two counts of sexual conduct between a student and a person in authority.

Mosley also ordered Wilson to have no contact with the boy or any other child under 18 in secluded areas, undergo drug and impulse control counseling and perform 16 hours of community service.

Wilson was a teacher's aide at Durango High School when she began having an affair with the boy, who was 16.

According to court records, when a Clark County Park Police officer found Wilson and the boy in a car at Desert Breeze Park on West Spring Mountain Road on Feb. 13, the officer smelled marijuana coming from the vehicle and found that the boy was partially nude.

Wilson and the boy, in separate interviews, told the officer that the boy had been trying to sexually assault Wilson. During subsequent interviews, however, the boy told police he and Wilson had been intimate on more than 50 occasions since November 2001.

The boy, who was in a program for students with emotional and behavioral problems, met Wilson when she assisted his English teacher for four weeks.

Deputy District Attorney Lisa Luzaich said that in comparison to other cases she has handled Wilson is not the "worst of the worst," but she did ask Mosley to impose the same sorts of restrictions on her as other sex offenders.

Mosley said that to impose all of those restrictions would be too harsh, considering the age of Wilson's own children and the effect it would have on their activities.

Wilson reassured Mosley that she no longer has the qualifications needed to work in the Clark County School District. She said she now holds a full-time job in market research.

Should Wilson violate her probation, she will have to serve 32 months in prison.

Mosley told the boy that should he try to contact Wilson, he will be held in contempt of court.