Allenna Williams Ward Due In Court Monday

Clinton, SC (TLS). On Friday, March 30, a Grand Jury indicted Allenna Williams Ward on five counts of criminal sexual misconduct with a minor and six counts of lewd acts on a minor.

Ward is scheduled to appear in court on Monday, April 2, 2007, to answer these charges and enter a plea.

Ward's attorney declined to give a statement or to answer any questions from the press.

Allenna Williams Ward was fired from her position as an English teacher at the Bell Street Middle School in Clinton following allegations by a group of teenagers, ages 14-15, that Ward had engaged in sexual activity with them in no less than five public places around Clinton.

Clinton is a small town of 10,000 in the upstate of South Carolina, roughly 60 miles north of the state capital of Columbia. Allenna Ward had spent her entire life in Clinton, graduating from its public schools and attending college at Clinton's Presbyterian College, where she received her teaching degree.

The Bell Street Middle School is a part of Laurens County School District 56 and was formerly an all-Black school prior to the days of integration. Laurens County is also the setting of stark racial tensions. The area is famous for the lynching of a Black man over 70 years ago, and to this day it is the setting for a KKK museum.

Some residents have quietly whispered that the rather harsh treatment of Ward, along with the mob mentality that has all but proclaimed her guilty as charged although a trial date has not even been set, is an indication of payback on the part of the town's African-American community for years of mistreatment by the area's whites in the criminal justice system.

Such sentiments would be understandable if Ward were found guilty. At this point, however, she is only charged with alleged crimes. Until she is found guilty in a court of law, she is presumed innocent of the charges.

A dangerous mindset exits among some in the African American community, however, that maintains that guilt or innocence in these cases is a non-issue. This was precisely what one activists stated in Durham in the midst of the Duke lacrosse rape scandal. According to the prevailing wisdom of the mob mentality, it does not matter if the accused is innocent. What matters is the payback for years of white mistreatment of blacks in the criminal justice system.

It is to be hoped that Ward has excellent legal counsel who can pull lots of string. He will need all the tools at his disposal to make sure his client gets a fair trial in this hotbed of racial pot-stirring.