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Jarretta Hamilton is angry and unemployed. The 39-year-old teacher was fired last April because she had sex before marriage and wound up pregnant. Now she has broken her silence and has gone public.
Hamilton has an 8-month-old baby girl with Samuel Treftz. The former fourth grade teacher was a widow with five children when she was hired in 2008 to teach at Southland Christian School in St. Cloud, Fla.
In April 2009, when Hamilton and her husband met with the principal of the school, Jon Ennis, to request a six-week maternity leave, she was met with an attitude that she could not even have fathomed.
Instead of sticking to the topic at hand, the maternity leave, Ennis began barraging Hamilton with questions about when she might have conceived her unborn child. He appeared to be more interested in delving into whether she had fornicated before marriage:
"He actually tried to do the math to figure out when I had conceived. I was absolutely shocked, it came out of nowhere. He actually fell back in his chair when I told him that I had conceived before marriage," she says.
About a week after Hamilton was interrogated by Ennis, she was terminated from her teaching position. The school called her actions "immoral." In a letter sent to Hamilton's attorney, Edward Gay, last July, Ennis wrote the following:
"Jarretta was asked not to return because of a moral issue that was disregarded, namely fornication, sex outside of marriage. The employment application, which she filled out, clearly states, that as a leader before our students we require all teachers to maintain and communicate the values and purpose of our school."
Now Hamilton has put on her boxing gloves and is ready to duke it out publicly with her former employer.
School officials, however, say there is a formal clause regarding morality that every teacher must abide by.
Hamilton doesn't buy it.
Treftz insists, "If there was a contract in place that had a morality clause, I think that would make a difference, he told NBC's Ann Curry on Monday. "At least people would know what they're getting into; I didn't know they were going to judge so harshly. I wasn't clear on what their stance was on certain issues," Hamilton adds.
To add insult to injury, when she was let go, Hamilton claims, that school administrators called a meeting to inform staff members and also told the parents of her students -- everyone was informed of her private information.
According to Gay, the termination violated federal anti-discrimination laws. In addition, they allege in a pending lawsuit that Hamilton's privacy was invaded when the school publicly released the personal details of her termination.
Now that Hamilton and her husband have gone public with their lawsuit, what does the school have to say about the matter?
According to MSNBC, Ennis sent Gay a letter requesting that his client give up the lawsuit:
"We request that Jarretta withdraw her complaint and consider the testimony of the Lord," the letter concludes.
Comments: (99)
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By: Melissa on 6/24/2010 2:50AM
Wow. People really can't read.
If there was no morality clause, which the article clearly states that there was not, then the school is in the wrong. Plain and simple. I went to Catholic schools my entire life and it was always well known that morality clauses existed in the teachers' contracts and the students had to abide by a code of conduct. You can't expect people to know things, Christian school or not. Even religious business are required to adhere to federal law. They can't just do what they want without legally specifying their expectations first.
Without a morality clause in her contract, this woman deserves as much money from this school as her lawyer can find. Not to mention her boss invading her privacy, which is outrageous.
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By: sharon on 6/27/2010 9:29PM
They most likely have staff there abusing kids. Will come out sooner or later like the priest screwing little boys
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By: Dee on 7/12/2010 5:36PM
This is so stupid..We are talking about adult here. I just wonder how many teachers are having sex outside of marriage and not becoming pregnant?
This is rediculous. If I were an administrator, I could care less about who someone is sleeping with or if they became pregant. If this was a good teacher and the students were learning, she was doing her job. Maybe that principal needs to get laid!!
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By: onjarrettside on 7/13/2010 3:38PM
The only reason its a big deal is because She BLACK and he WHITE!!!!!!!
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By: tazmanian girl on 8/27/2010 11:46AM
I'ts because u is with a white man we had a few preggo teacher that are not married, and still have their job. I guess it all depends on the rules in the state. We are not living under the OLD TESTAMENT anymore , but that doesnt excuse sin!!! "SIN HAS 2 COME 2 AN END"!
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By: exit105nj on 8/11/2010 7:41PM
let us not forget that even though a person may be Christian that we all have sinned, he who is without sin let him cast the first stone
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By: kheru on 8/25/2010 10:15AM
why do people with good sense continue to practice any religion that makes sex a sin?
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By: Judah on 3/09/2011 4:50PM
Okay, first of all, she was ENGAGED to this man. This was not random. Secondly, who is anyone to judge the 'morality' of her behavior? If these 'Christians' had a brain in their heads, they would have known that according to the Bible that no sin is greater than any other. This means, if she happened to lie to a friend about how much she makes a year, it shouldn't matter any more to the school than this should have. If she would have stayed at the school, would the children have realized, or cared, when her baby was concieved? No. So how could she be setting a bad example? All they would know is that she is married and has only had children with her husbands. She's amazing for raising so many children, and has every right to sue. What business was it of anyone's WHEN she concieved her child, especially if she was married less than a month later to the father? And whether or not someone is Christian does not change the legality of this issue. The school was obviously more concerned with money than it was losing the services of a great teacher.
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