Tennessee school board member charged after calling teenage girl ‘hot’ | Tennessee
An east Tennessee school board member who said “God, you’re so hot” on video to a teenage girl at a public meeting in April has been charged with assault.
State prosecutors charged Keith Ervin, 59, on May 18 under a Tennessee law that makes “intentional or knowing” crimes illegal. [causing] physical contact with another person [that] “A reasonable person would consider … extremely offensive or provocative”.
Tennessee considers this crime a class B misdemeanor, which, upon conviction, can carry up to six months in prison and a maximum fine of $500.
Ervin’s accusation came after he attended the April 2 meeting of the Washington County school board, to which he was first elected in 2006. video for the public board’s YouTube channel, Ervin looked at a female student sitting next to him, put his left hand on her right shoulder, and said, “God, you’re so hot. Did you know that? Damn.”
She laughed uncomfortably as he bent down and wrapped his left arm around her shoulders and continued: “Where do you go to school?” He gave the name of his school and she rejoined, “Okay.”
At the end of the speech, others in the room could be heard laughing. And Washington school district superintendent Jerry Boyd visibly smiled as he stood on the other side of the student.
Local media reports state that the girl is a senior in high school and a student representative on the board. His father later criticized Ervin’s behavior on social media as “disturbing and inappropriate.”
In this statement reported by the Tennessee news outlet WJHLThe girl’s father said neither he nor her mother believed Ervin “should have been around students” and expressed disbelief that the moment passed “without immediate responsibility.”
ervin supplied In his own statement to WJHL, he claimed that he “wasn’t always good with words.” Although he admitted that the video of him and the girl looked bad, he also maintained that he would not intentionally offend anyone.
A. Change.org petition The call to remove Boyd and Ervin almost immediately garnered more than 7,400 signatures. Ervin’s fellow school board members voted to censure him at a special meeting April 8 as outrage over his filmed remarks spread beyond Washington County.
The schoolgirl at the center of the assault case addressed the county school board directly at a May 7 meeting and told board members she was unimpressed with their handling of the matter, according to Tennessee’s Knoxville News Sentinel. reported. She accused board members of cowardice while rejecting apologies from them, saying: “I do not forgive you.”
She added: “Thank you for teaching me that no one will defend me but myself. Thank you for showing this community that you believe in what it means to protect our children.”
After being indicted in Washington district court, Ervin was served with a criminal summons ordering him to appear at a hearing tentatively scheduled for Aug. 7.
Ervin did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.
His Washington school district bio says he is a self-employed dairy farmer. The biography also notes that Ervin has two daughters who previously graduated from the school attended by the student listed as a victim in the ongoing assault case.
