Mother disturbed over school employee's lewd texts to 11-year-old
WAIKIKI (HawaiiNewsNow) - An Oahu elementary school employee is on leave after being accused of sending lewd text messages to an 11-year-old student.
The boy's mother asked Hawaii News Now to conceal her identity to ensure her son's anonymity, however she wants to speak publicly about the issue in hopes it doesn't happen again.
It was an early morning text last month that sent her searching through her son's phone.
"Nobody texts a child at 5:30 in the morning," the boy's mother said. "Not thinking I would find anything, but just to make sure because it was kind of odd for me at 5:30 in the morning. And sure enough that's where I found the text messages."
She found more than 200 messages from Thomas Jefferson Elementary School's employee, Korey Matthews Wong. Wong works as a Data Processing User Support Tech.
She said her son met Wong when he was in the 5th grade. She said many of the texts included inappropriate comments that dated back to January.
"It was really devastating because this is somebody who we trusted," she said.
His mother is upset about how long it took for the school to get the employee away from her son.
A judge granted her and her son a temporary restraining order on Tuesday saying Wong is not allowed to contact him, even enter the child's school.
The Hawaii Department of Education said Wong has been with the department since 2013, and was placed on leave on April 13.
The mother said that was ten days after she met with the principal. In addition, she said the principal never told her Wong was on leave saying, "all actions regarding personnel matters are confidential."
"You guys send us news letters about kids having head lice, you guys send us news letters about suspicious vehicles. Yet when it's actually an employee that's at the actual school with a child, we don't have the right to know, that makes no sense whatsoever," she said.
The woman is confident Wong never touched her son, but did file a harassment complaint against him.
"In our point of view, it was more like the grooming process. Fortunately for us, we caught it earlier, in time, but it was definitely progressing," she said.
Court records show Wong did not dispute the request for the TRO. He has not been charged or arrested for any crime. The attorney who represented him in court would not provide a comment.
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