A high school student and a teacher were arrested Wednesday after allegations that the student sexually assaulted a middle school student and the teacher ignored and encouraged the assault. Police say they have video footage of the assault.

After the two men were arrested, police were informed that an additional student claimed she was sexually assaulted by Alamance High School student 18-year-old Brandon Tyler Lane and that the teacher, 42-year-old Samuel Bradley Freeze, did nothing to stop him. Police quickly investigated the new allegation and determined the middle school student who made the claim was never assaulted.

Police found witnesses that said the girl’s mother, Melissa Marie King, 35, made up the story and forced her daughter to make the allegation in an attempt to extort money out of the school system, The Times-News reported.

“It is believed this was an attempt to have leverage over Alamance-Burlington School System, where the mother planned to file a lawsuit against the school system in the future,” the Sheriff’s Office said.

For her false allegation, King faces just a single misdemeanor count of filing a false report with police and was held in lieu of $500 bail, the Times-News reported. She apparently tried to “piggyback” off of the sexual assault case against the two men.

The Times-News reported that investigators found video of Lane sexually assaulting the other middle-school students and evidence that Freeze knew what had happened but did nothing. Freeze was driving the bus where the incidents allegedly happened. His arrest warrant claims he “allowed and encouraged [Lane] … while asking and making sexual comments to [Lane] about the sexual act happening to the victim.”

There has been some confusion about Freeze’s employment with the school, as the Times-News reported:

Freeze had been employed at the school for more than 20 years, serving as an in-school suspension teacher, coach of multiple sports, including wrestling, baseball, boys’ and girls’ basketball, football and track and field, substitute bus driver and, most recently, served in a support role for the athletics department. In August, The Times-News published an article about Freeze being named athletics director at the high school, but school system human resources officials said Wednesday, March 11, that Freeze was not the athletics director. His former position was listed as “Support for Athletics Department,” according to Jenny Faulkner, the public information officer for the Alamance-Burlington School System. Faulkner said Freeze’s employment was terminated Tuesday, March 10. The school system has not released any further statement about the assaults.

Parents have used their children in this manner before. In July 2018, The Daily Wire reported on the arrest of Tammy Steffen, who told police that a man had tried to kidnap her 12-year-old daughter and that she had been sent anonymous threatening messages. It turned out the woman framed her former business partner because she believed the man manipulated votes or otherwise kept her from winning an online fitness contest. In another case, from December 2019, a woman claimed her son was kidnapped to police would look for her stolen car.