Former DCS worker who molested dying boyfriend's son gets probation

Jamie Satterfield | Knoxville

Show Caption Hide Caption Former DCS worker molests dying boyfriend's son A 58-year-old former Department of Children’s Services paralegal who seduced her boyfriend’s teenage son while his father was dying and used her state email to send him sexually-charged messages was sentenced Thursday to probation.

A 58-year-old former Department of Children’s Services paralegal who seduced her boyfriend’s teenage son while his father was dying and used her state email to send him sexually-charged messages was sentenced Thursday to probation.

It was not an outcome prosecutor Joanie Stewart wanted, but she told Knox County Criminal Court Judge Bob McGee at a hearing Thursday the law was on Mary Lisa Woods’ side.

“I think we’re still at a point where Ms. Woods still has not accepted responsibility for her part in this,” Stewart told McGee. “She was the adult in this situation … Ms. Woods is eligible for probation. The state acknowledges that. (But) it’s going to haunt (the victim) for the rest of his life.”

Legal deck stacked

Woods worked for the state Department of Children's Services for more than 14 years. She was serving as a paralegal with the Knoxville office of the agency when, in 2013, she began molesting the 15-year-old son behind her boyfriend's back and continued even after the boy's father died last year, records show.

Defense attorney John Eldridge brokered a plea deal in which Woods pleaded guilty to aggravated statutory rape and received a two-year sentence. Eldridge on Thursday sought probation, citing among other things a long list of health woes Woods suffers.

McGee did not have much choice. The law presumes defendants like Woods, with no history of violence or felony convictions, are eligible for probation absent a legally compelling reason. The victim, now 19, was reluctant to endure a trial.

“I trusted her,” the teenager told McGee. “I pray she never does this to another child, what she’s done to me.”

Mom: Woods wanted son to 'take care of her'

In an interview with USA TODAY NETWORK-Tennessee after Woods’ arrest, the boy’s mother said her son had been “acting up” in the months following his father’s April 2014 death from a medical condition. By August, she was at her wit’s end, so she said she began searching through a phone she believed her son’s paternal grandmother had given him.

On the phone, she found an email from Woods from her DCS account.

She knew Woods, who allegedly began an affair with her husband before the pair divorced in March 2014, but did not know how she was employed. Woods had been living with her husband and, when the custody agreement allowed, with her son, she said.



“The email said she wanted (her son) to take care of her like his dad did,” she said.



Also in the phone in both emails and text messages were racy photographs of Woods, she said.



Her son initially denied he was being molested. But the mother said she then recalled a strange call she had received from his father from his hospital bed before his death.



“He said he woke up to the two of them in the same chair,” she said. “She was grabbing her clothes and ran into the bathroom. She came out screaming, saying (the boy) had tried to (sexually assault) her.”



The teenager’s father said the boy denied the allegation but refused to elaborate. He also refused to discuss the incident with his mother.

Teen says he's molestation victim

The mother said she went to police after discovering the phone, which her son revealed Woods had provided him. The boy was interviewed at Childhelp, a sexual assault counseling center, and told authorities Woods “started making moves on him” soon after she began dating his father.



Even after his father’s death, Woods continued to push him for what his mother said he described as “sexual favors.” She tricked the teenager’s paternal grandmother into believing she was taking the boy to Bible School, for instance, the mother said.

The mother is not being identified to protect the identity of her son.

Woods resigned from DCS in lieu of termination after the agency conducted its own probe along with that of the Knoxville Police Department.

Stewart told McGee that even after pleading guilty Woods has continued to minimize her role as predator. But Eldridge countered a psychosexual report deemed Woods a “low risk” for abusing other children.

McGee ordered Woods to be placed on the state’s sex offender registry and to be supervised by a special psychosexual unit within the state’s probation system.

“This court will enforce the requirements set by the probation department,” McGee told Woods.