Clyde Ledbetter-Candidate for Sheriff-Responds, in Part, to Sheriff Alan Norman’s Negative and misleading ad hosted for free by WBTV-3 TV News!!! Hosted by Robert A. Williams as part of our Online Candidates Debate initiative
Editor’s Note: This situation started almost three years ago when Sara Ledbetter, a Ninth Grade Science teacher at Crest High School allegedly began having inappropriate relationships with students. And taking lots of naked selfies of herself on her cell phone. Something the foolish Cleveland County DA and judges would later term as “a woman’s private text messages that included personal pictures.”
As I have previously written, I became interested in this case over two years ago when the School Board allegedly forced Sara Ledbetter to resign so they would not have to take disciplinary action, which allowed Sara Ledbetter to keep her teaching license and continue her alleged bad behavior at other schools in South Carolina and North Carolina.
The bottom line in this case is that CCS, the Sheriff’s Office, The DA’s Office and Cleveland County Judges, in a major conspiracy to cover-up the inappropriate and criminal acts by Sara Ledbetter by destroying the constitutional rights of the Clyde Ledbetter family to shut them up. And to maintain a situation that continued to put children at risk in Cleveland County, South Carolina and Gaston County to this very day.
Also, a question for the parents of school age children. Do you consider it appropriate for a school teacher who is caught with literally hundreds of naked pictures of herself on her cell phone to continue to teach children in North Carolina?
Then, Sheriff Alan Norman comes up with this, all the time knowing better.
Also note that the information provided below by Clyde Ledbetter is incomplete in regard to the totality of the bad things and the miscarriages of justice that have befallen the Ledbetter family. Perhaps Mr. Ledbetter is still under family pressure to put this bad experience behind them. As I have independently reviewed all the court documents myself, obtained the so called private naked pictures from court records-public records, I am not obligated to leave anything truthful out. And I won’t. But, for this article, I am providing Clyde Ledbetter’s own words in response to the negative and misleading material put out by Sheriff Alan Norman. A totally regrettable and unnecessary situation.
Shame on you Sheriff Alan Norman, Danny Blanton, CCS, the DA, Judge Dean Black, Judge Ali Paksoy and all you others involved in the Cleveland County INJUSTICE done in this case. All of you should resign from public service. Shame on you Eddie Holbrook sycophants too. I know who you are. The truth will catch up to you soon enough.
Folks, When you are reading the material below, remember that:
The plaintiff is Sara Ledbetter.
The defendant is Bryan Ledbetter, Clyde’s son.
The father is Clyde Ledbetter.
The mother is Janet Ledbetter, Clyde’s wife
Please read the following information carefully as you will be disappointed in CCS, the School Board, The Sheriff’s Office. The DA’s Office, judges and the Cleveland County Justice system. I was flabbergasted that all these so-called Public Safety and child advocates would abandon the safety of children in favor of covering up for a school teacher pervert. I have the pictures from court documents that show the pervert in action. The same pictures all these other nitwits had access to.
All of those involved have the opportunity to provide their side of this story. That is more than you offered the Clyde Ledbetter family. Especially Bryan Ledbetter.
WHAT DO THEY KNOW AND WHEN DID THEY KNOW IT?
Provided by Clyde Ledbetter
On March 27, 2015 an incident occurred in Cleveland County which eventually sent the Cleveland County Justice system into action. On March 30, 2015 a report came into the Cleveland County justice system about that incident. The citizen’s arrest procedures were followed and the Sheriff’s Department immediately launched an investigation. The court ordered that cell phones be confiscated and dumped. Witnesses were called in and three felony arrest warrants were issued based on witness testimony. The DA and the Sheriff had the case handled in a matter of hours.
A problem began to develop when the cell phone information was returned to the justice system and subsequently delivered to the lawyers. The information delivered to the lawyers from the defendant’s cell phone showed a complete recording of the cell phone history. The information from the plaintiff’s cell phone delivered to the lawyers showed a recording of only the last five or six days that the cell phone was used. The court had ordered that both cell phones be dumped and discovery required that the information be delivered to the lawyers.
Not only was the plaintiff’s cell phone history severely limited, what was delivered to the lawyers had numerous missing text entries. After receiving the discovery package the defendant in the case did his own investigation. He found some things that seem to be inappropriate. The defendant had already seen the cell phone history in its entirety a few weeks earlier. The cell phone was the reason that he had been charged with three felonies. The defendant’s career, custody of his children, his retirement, his honor, and life as he knew it was hanging on information that he had seen in that cell phone. What he saw in his discovery package was only a minor fraction of what he had seen earlier. Without that information, he felt that he had no proof of his claims.
The defendant’s father had previously spoken on the phone with Cleveland County SBI representative Amy Endicott about the case. Ms. Endicott had told him that she had just finished looking at hundreds of naked pictures of the plaintiff which were contained in the cell phone discovery package and that as far as the DA was concerned, the plaintiff had done nothing illegal. The Father asked Ms. Endicott if that was just an opinion of the DA or if that was the law. Ms. Endicott told him that she would speak with the DA about the situation and get back in touch with him with an answer. Ms. Endicott never got back in touch with him.
On the surface, the cell phone discovery package appeared to have no naked pictures of the plaintiff. During his personal investigation of the cell phone information in the discovery package the defendant found an obscure app which had been used at an earlier date to record and send information. When he opened the file he found a portion of what he had seen earlier. He believed that what he had found would be enough to convince the Cleveland County justice system that his claims were legitimate. His father and his uncle took this new information to the Cleveland County Sheriff. The Sheriff’s response was: That girl is crazy. They asked the sheriff what he could do to help. The sheriff told them that would be up to him and his lawyer.
Not long after this the Cleveland County justice system issued a restraining order to prevent the defendant or anyone in the defendant’s family from showing anything in the discovery package to anyone. The court’s claim was that innocent romantic partners could be harmed if this information was made public. The problem with that claim is that there was no picture of romantic partners included in the discovery package. It was apparent that all the “romantic partner” pictures had been deleted from the discovery package before it was sent to the lawyers, if there ever were any. The only pictures in the discovery package were self-made pictures of the plaintiff which were discovered by the defendant during his own personal investigation. Some of these self-made obscene pictures were made in her home and some of these self-made obscene pictures were made at her school while she was being paid by the state to teach ninth grade science.
Included in the discovery package were five or six days of text messages recovered from the plaintiff’s cell phone. In these text messages several things were found that violated school policy and general statutes of the state of North Carolina including the following: sexting while at school with students or former students, possessing illegal drugs on school property, trafficking illegal drugs while teaching school, unprofessional conduct, taking and disseminating self-made pictures of exposed breasts at school with her personal cell phone, taking self-made pictures masturbating while sitting at her desk during school hours (at school) with her personal cell phone, taking illegal pictures of students in the classroom without their knowledge, sending and receiving text messages on her personal cell phone at a rate of approximately 300 per day while teaching, and sending and receiving obscene text while teaching school.
What do they know and when did they know it? All the above information was delivered to the Cleveland County justice system by way of a download of a personal cell phone during April 2015. The Cleveland County justice system is guilty of one of two things. Either they never reviewed the discovery package, thereby exhibiting incompetence and negligence by not knowing about the above information, or they did review the discovery package and decided to cover it up because of a hasty rush to judgment. The Cleveland County justice system had an obligation under the general statutes of the state of North Carolina to advise the proper authorities of unacceptable conduct by any teacher at any public school. The Cleveland County justice system has let down our children by allowing such conduct as described above to continue to this day even though they have known about it for over three years. The Cleveland County school board has known about this for over three years. District 5 school board in Spartanburg County South Carolina has known about this for almost 3 years. Gaston County Schools were advised of this behavior and they chose to ignore it, Spartanburg County schools administration gave a good recommendation to Gaston County Schools when they let the plaintiff go for personal reasons. I wonder why.