Teacher, student found in W. Va.
Holyoke parents alarmed over alleged affair
HOLYOKE - Parents who knew Lisa Lavoie as an attractive special education teacher from a respected Ludlow family were stunned to hear that the first-year teacher had been accused of running off with a 15-year-old student at the Maurice Donahue Elementary School.
Pat Sweeney, the mother of a 15-year-old at the school, said that students liked Lavoie. The young teacher has black hair and blue eyes and was often mistaken for a pupil.
"You think they'll be safe," Sweeney said, shaking her head as she picked up her children yesterday. "You don't ever think that a teacher would let something like this happen."
Lavoie and the student were taken into custody yesterday at a Super 8 Motel in Morgantown, W.Va., Holyoke police said. She was charged with kidnapping and will return to Massachusetts to face charges of child enticement, a felony. The student, who is not identified by the Globe because he is a minor, is in the custody of West Virginia's youth services division and is expected to return to Massachusetts today. Holyoke detectives left yesterday to meet State Police in West Virginia to pick up the teenager.
Police said yesterday that an alleged affair between Lavoie and the student went on for months and that the boy's friends knew about it. Neighbors and school staff said that the boy lived in a housing development next to the school and that he had not advanced beyond the eighth grade.
Police added that the boy's parents had complained to the school about their suspicions of an affair just days before the two went missing, but no one at the school had contacted police. The boy's family contacted police after he disappeared.
School officials refused to comment yesterday.
Mayor Michael J. Sullivan called the alleged kidnapping and affair a "maddening" blow to a poor, urban school system that already struggles with gangs, drugs, and a lack of parental involvement.
"Urban districts like Holyoke always have a difficult time attracting a large pool of [teaching] candidates," he said. "We're providing [our students] with an education, but they're coming with a lot of difficulties, a lot of challenges."
Lavoie, 24, was in her first year of teaching at the school, although she had been a substitute teacher there a year earlier, said Police Chief Anthony R. Scott. Her family owns a construction company, Scott said, and Lavoie had graduated from Elms College, a private Catholic college in Chicopee.
According to Sullivan, she was paid a stipend to oversee an after-school program called Connections. She got to know the student there. The program had little structure: Students could play basketball, produce plays, or simply hang out.
The boy's parents complained to a guidance counselor about their suspicions of an inappropriate relationship on Feb. 13. Police said the parents found something in the boy's bedroom that raised suspicion, but they would not specify.
Sullivan said no one at the school acted on the complaint because it was made the day before school vacation. Three days later, the parents reported the boy as missing.
Detective David Usher pieced the story together with help from Lavoie's family, which has cooperated with the investigation.
Usher traced their whereabouts using financial records, learning that the pair had gone to Brattleboro and Springfield, Vt., before heading to New Jersey and Morgantown, W.Va.
Scott said Lavoie was not arrested until yesterday because the Hampden district attorney's office did not issue a warrant for enticement until Monday. At that point, the two had been missing for eight days. Subsequently, a judge in West Virginia issued a warrant for kidnapping, police said.
"We got statements from a lot of people showing that there had been sexual activity between the two," Scott said. "To satisfy the DA's office, we had to jump through a lot of hoops."
Hampden District Attorney William M. Bennett said in a phone interview last evening that West Virginia State Police located Lavoie at the motel Monday night and issued the warrant shortly thereafter. "Once she was located, the warrant was issued pretty quickly," he said.
Lavoie's family has hired lawyer David Hoose, Scott said. Hoose could not be reached last evening.
But parents like Luis Ortiz, the father of a kindergartner at the school, expressed outrage. When he learned about the alleged kidnapping, he went to the school to pick up his child.
"I was afraid yesterday, and I came down here right away," he said. "There's no security at this school." 