Note: This report contains discussions of sexual abuse, self-harm, and suicide. If you or anyone you know is in crisis, call the mental health hotline at 98 .
On a Tuesday evening in February 2018, I got a phone call from a Sheriff’s Deputy. We talked briefly. They told me that a teacher named Michael Earl Kelly had been arrested, that the charges were serious, and that there was more to come. I asked how serious. The deputy said only, “it’s bad.”
Criminal investigation and civil litigation involving New Hanover County Schools district have dragged on for four years. That’s left the survivors of sexual abuse by former teacher Michael Earl Kelly in limbo, struggling "minute by minute," as one young man put it. For them, justice, healing, and closure are taking a very long time.
It's been five years since the North Carolina Department of Transportation and the Pender County Board of Commissioners named a section of US 17 after former Ambassador Mattie Sharpless. Saturday afternoon, Manhollow Missionary Baptist Church, located in Hampstead, hosted this 5-year commemoration honoring Ambassador Sharpless. Upon retiring in 2006 and after 41 years of dedication to U.S. Foreign Service's, Ambassador Sharpless still remains active in the community. Senior Resident Superior Court Judge, Phyllis Gorham, said Ambassador Sharpless has been and will forever be an inspiration to her and all who she's mentored.
Robert Adam Burns started grooming a girl when she was 10 and began sexually abusing her in the following years. She had also been victimized by Peter Michael Frank, the former New Hanover County Schools band teacher who was sentenced to decades in prison last year.