39-year-old Ridgewood, Queens, teaching aide Clara Somodi has been charged with rape, criminal sex assault, and endangering the welfare of a child for having at least ten off-campus sexual encounters with a 14-year-old male student, the New York Daily News reports. Somodi, who has been working at P.S. 9 for ten years and has a 9-year-old daughter, was suspended without pay after being arrested at around 1 a.m. on Thursday. The Daily News reports that the abuse was discovered after a speech therapist asked the victim what he had done the day before. The boy responded that he’d been “hanging out with his girlfriend” and, when asked about who she was, he “related details about his teacher,” according to the police. Somodi is expected to be arraigned on Thursday evening.
