MIAMI — When police wanted to question a teacher accused of having an affair with an eighth-grader at a private religious school, she was out of town -- vacationing at Disney World with the student.
Upon her return Saturday, 32-year-old Maria Guzman Hernandez, a sixth-grade teacher at Hialeah's Our Lady of Charity, admitted to police in Hialeah, Fla., a Miami suburb, that she'd had sex with the 15-year-old.
Hernandez was charged with sexual battery on a child over whom she had custodial authority, a charge similar to statutory rape.
The boy's mother, who acknowledged to both police and Department of Children & Families investigators that she approved of the relationship, is under investigation by both agencies for permitting the teen to have a months-long affair with the teacher, and for consenting to the theme park trip.
Hernandez and the teen had a ''sexual relationship'' for several months, and the boy told police they had been ''sexually active'' since March, according to a police report. The two met at the school, 1900 W. 44th Pl.
Detective Carl Zogby, a Hialeah police spokesman, said many of the couple's romantic encounters occurred at the apartment the boy shared with his mother.
''She apparently didn't find anything wrong with it, thought that the teacher was a nice enough person and a good influence on her son,'' Zogby said.
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