Bruce Vielmetti

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

A fifth-grade teacher at a Milwaukee school has been charged with sexually assaulting her 11-year-old student last month, part of an ongoing relationship she told police was intended to make the "chronically depressed" boy feel happy.

Katherine Gonzalez, 24, faces a single count of first-degree sexual assault of a child under 13, punishable by up to 40 years in prison. She was formerly on the staff at Atlas Preparatory Academy in Bay View.

According to the criminal complaint:

The victim told police he and Gonzalez were communicating over Snap Chat on Feb. 25, a Saturday. She picked him up in her car and they kissed, and she had had the boy touch her genital area over her clothes. After they got to Gonzalez's Bay View apartment, they watched the movie Deadpool, and she rubbed her hand over the boy's groin and had him touch her breasts over her clothing, the boy told police. They also kissed, he said.

In a police interview, Gonzalez admitted to the relationship and acts on Feb. 25. Asked why she might have engaged in the inappropriate behavior, Gonzalez told a detective she was nervous about an anticipated marriage proposal from her boyfriend and having second thoughts about their relationship.

The complaint includes some of the messages she sent the boy on SnapChat and Instagram. One read, "“Do you think I’m gross?” and “Idk cause I’m in love with a kid I hate that I can’t tell anyone either.”

She told a detective she is not actually in love with the boy, but that she'd do anything to make him happy, short of having sex. "I feel like if I were going to have sex with him I would have just done it already," she told the detective.

Atlas Prep is a K-12 private school at 1039 E. Russell Ave. that participates in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. It enrolled 693 students in the fall of 2016, according to state data. All of the students attend with the help of a taxpayer-funded tuition voucher.

Voucher schools are not required by law to conduct or make public the results of background checks on staff, and voucher-school teachers are not required by law to have a state teaching license, which requires a background check.

But Gov. Scott Walker's proposed state budget for 2017-'19 would require private voucher schools to conduct background investigations on potential employees before hiring them to teach or serve as administrators. Voucher schools would have to repeat the background check at least once every five years after that, according to the governor's proposal.

Erin Richards of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.