What happened to Kimberly Winters? Virginia teacher awarded $5M over wrongful abuse charge

Earlier this month, Kimberly Winters, a former Virginia teacher, was awarded 5 million dollars after winning a civil case against a police officer. Winters had sued the sheriff's detective for wrongful arrest, which she claimed ruined her career and life.

The case dates back to 2018 when Winters alleged that officers broke into her bedroom in the early morning hours and arrested her for s*xually abusing a former student while was a minor. According to the Washington Post, the student's family had accused the high school teacher of abusing him after he graduated from high school.

When authorities proved that the student in question was already of 18 years of age, and hence not a minor, during the alleged inappropriate contact between him and Kimberly Winters, the accusers changed it to a date when the student was a 17-year-old.

The lawsuit against the official states that although Winters had provided the police with alibis for both the dates mentioned by the student and his mother, Detective Peter Roque did not interview her or review her whereabouts.

Kimberly Winters was charged with indecent liberties with a minor by a person in a custodial or supervisory relationship for allegedly having a s*xual relationship with one of her students. However, the charges were dropped after months of investigation.

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Peter Roque allegedly admitted to charging Kimberly Winters without "any investigation"

According to Winters, a former Loudoun County high school teacher, the first time she got to know about the s*xual abuse charges against her was when officers burst into her room early in the morning to arrest her. She told the Washington Post:

"It was very terrifying. I still have nightmares. Big guns."

She claimed that the deputies cuffed her and patted her down in her pajamas in the front yard of her Sterling home, in full view of the neighborhood. She was allegedly strip-searched at the Loudoun jail, which her lawyer claims went against the sheriff’s policies because she was not booked into jail.

Her mugshot was also distributed to the local media outlets along with a press release charging her with s*xually abusing one of her students when he was 17. Such actions effectively ostracized her from society and left her without a job.

Kimberly Winters’s lawyer, Thomas K. Plofchan, claimed that Roque had not seriously investigated any of the student’s claims before arresting his client. A search warrant application stated that the witnesses’ statements were corroborated by phone records, but such records reportedly did not exist.

Thomas Plofchan told the Washington Post that Peter Roque admitted to charging Kimberly Winters "without doing any investigation."

Speaking about her ostracization from society, Winters said:

"It became so humiliating, I literally couldn’t go out of my house. This has been going on for four years. The repeated trauma of having to relive this created this tremor. My entire body shakes."

The accuser's mother remains convinced of the allegations against the former teacher and called the judgment in favor of Winters a "miscarriage of justice."