By Ivan Pereira
A teacher at a Jamaica middle school was arrested last Thursday after investigators discovered he was allegedly carrying on a sexual affair with one of his students for more than a year, the Queens district attorney said.
Charles Oross, 44, of East Islip, L.I., was set to be arraigned on statutory rape and endangering the welfare of a child charges for the affair, which went on while he was teaching at IS 238, at 88-15 182nd St., DA Richard Brown said.
Oross and the female student, who was 13 at the time, had sex on several occasions at the Jamaica school and in his car between January 2009 and April 2010, according to the DA.
“This case is particularly disturbing because the defendant is a teacher and schools should be safe havens for children. Instead, this defendant is accused of sexually preying upon one of his eighth-grade students during a rendezvous in an empty classroom,” he said in a statement.
The city Department of Education said it is investigating the allegations and is in the process of terminating the teacher. Currently, he has been suspended from any duties and been ordered to stay at home, according to a source close to the school.
The DOE did not return phone calls for comment last Thursday afternoon. IS 238 was at the forefront of the 2009 swine flu epidemic, when several members of the school contracted the disease, including then-Assistant Principal Mitchell Wiener.
Wiener was the city’s first casualty of the disease.
In addition to the alleged trysts, Oross and the student engaged in sexually explicit Facebook messages and e-mails, the DA said.
