Gay Davidson-Shepard, the retired Huntington Beach teacher and former teacher association president accused of sexually tag-teaming a 17-year-old male student with her retired teacher husband, was arrested today for allegedly contacting the victim.
The 59-year-old called and texted the victim, who is now 18, several times over the past several weeks in violation of a restraining order, according to Westminster Police.
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She now faces a misdemeanor charge of violating a protective order to go along with the other counts against her: three felony counts each of unlawful sexual
intercourse, sodomy with a person under 18 years old, oral copulation of
a minor, and one misdemeanor count of contributing to the delinquency
of a minor. Without the misdemeanor, she was looking at the possibility of eight years and four months in state prison with convictions.
Her 62-year-old husband, Daniel Alma Shepard, is charged with two felony counts of oral copulation of a
minor, one felony count of sodomy with a person under 18 years old, one
felony count of possession and control of child pornography, and one
misdemeanor count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. He's facing up to five years in the joint.
He met the boy while still a science teacher at Westminster
High School. The couple is alleged to have groomed the boy in March 2009
by regularly inviting him to their Huntington Beach home to drink
alcohol, eat, play board games, and watch movies. The following
month, the couple is accused of getting into their home's hot tub naked
and encouraging the then-17-year-old to do the same. Davidson-Shepard is
accused of then blowing her husband and the boy.
On a weekly
basis from that point forward, according to the Orange County District
Attorney's office (OCDA), the couple got the youth drunk and
engaged in illegal sex acts with him, including mutual masturbation,
oral copulation, sexual intercourse, and sodomy.
For Shepard,
this allegedly happened through September 2009. He is also accused of
asking the boy to send nude photos of himself and to pose for shots
naked or engaged in sex acts. For Davidson-Shepard, the sexual
assaults lasted through December 2009, the OCDA claims. The victim
turned 18 that month so, as an adult, criminal conduct cannot be alleged
for any sex thereafter.
The young man reported the kinky
relationship to his mother in March. She contacted the
Westminster Police Department, which launched the investigation that
resulted in the couple's arrest. They each made $150,000 bail and were released from custody. Davidson-Shepard was picked up at her Huntington Beach home and taken back to jail this morning.
She was a teacher at Mesa View Middle School in Huntington Beach at the time of the alleged trysts. A month after being placed on administrative leave, Davidson-Shepard retired from the Ocean View School District in May.
Previous coverage:
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.