Joynes taught at 11 different kindergarten schools.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: Former elementary school music teacher Lawrence Joynes pleaded guilty Monday morning to sexually abusing 14 minors after being charged and held at the Baltimore Country Detention Center on child pornography charges since August of last year.
In total, Joynes, 54, has been charged with 14 counts of sex abuse of a minor, one count of sex offense in the third degree, child abuse and second-degree rape, according to local ABC affiliate WJLA.
Joynes, who taught for 27 years in 11 different Montgomery schools, officially admitted to abusing students in kindergarten through second grade while he worked at New Hampshire Estates Elementary School in Silver Spring, Md.
Most of Joynes’ abuse occurred inside his music classroom during school hours, where he put young girls in sexual poses and made video recordings of them — movies he later edited with sexually explicit captions, according to police. Joynes allegedly formed a group of students called the “lunch bunch,†earning their trust and recording some of them as they licked candy canes, wrote the Washington Post.
The Post also reported the abuse dates back to the 1990s, when Joyce allegedly preyed on a girl under the age of 15.
“Police say Joynes gained that child’s trust, communicated with her in coded language and increased his sexual contact with her over time. Police said that contact built from kisses and fondling to sex acts in his car and ultimately intercourse, which occurred weekly, including behind a stage in a music room,” the Post reported.
Joyce, a resident of Dundalk, Maryland, will be sentenced at a later date, and he faces the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison. Police claim that he was abusing students up until his arrest in February 2013.