A female prison teacher has been charged with breach of trust after bringing a’sex phone’ into the facility and making over 300 calls on it.
Meredith Leyrer, 54, was assigned to a local prison to assist inmates with their education prior to their release, but she is now suspected of smuggling narcotics, a phone for phone sex, and money to inmates.
Leyrer was caught and is now facing charges in Michigan for making and delivering opioids, bringing contraband into a correctional facility, and carrying a phone into a correctional facility.
Since last December, Leyrer has worked as an educator for the IGNITE (Inmate Growth Naturally and Intentionally Through Education) program.
However, authorities believe she soon began to misuse her position.
Sheriff Swanson described IGNITE as a “education model, a culture change,” but added that “when we see someone from within try to take that down, we have to realize that nothing is sacred.”
He told the TV channel that the type of drug smuggling scheme in which Leyrer is reportedly involved is tough to carry out, and those who do “use their positions of influence and trust, and they abuse it.”
Leyrer taught at Mount Morris High School, an official partner of IGNITE.
She allegedly placed more than $630 (£490) into three inmate accounts beginning in December before beginning to smuggle in fentanyl pills and marijuana wax cans.
Surveillance video allegedly captured Leyrer passing more than 100 fentanyl tablets to an inmate inside a folder while they sat at a table during a lesson one day.
Swanson alleged, “This is not a teacher; this is a drug smuggler dressed as a teacher.”
He also claims Leyrer snuck a phone into the jail “so she could have phone sex” with detainees, and that she made over 350 calls to inmates in December.
Swanson said Leyrer burst into tears when he told her he was “disappointed” in her following her detention, claiming she told him she had “low self-esteem” and had been “groomed” by the convicts.
Sheriff Swanson claimed that she justified her conduct as a result of her grooming in the same manner that an addict does. She is still being held on a $20,000 (£15,569) bond.
Sheriff Swanson swore not to abandon IGNITE “because of a drug smuggler.”
