A Florida woman is facing felony charges for allegedly posing online as a homeschooler to sexually assault an underage boy.
22-year-old Alyssa Ann Zinger was arrested in Tampa on Nov. 24 and taken to jail; she faces two counts of lewd or lascivious battery and five counts of lewd or lascivious molestation. The police do not believe this was an isolated incident.
“It is disturbing and unsettling to see an adult take advantage of a child and prey on them,” Chief Lee Bercaw said in a statement. “Anyone who may have been a victim of Zinger’s, we encourage you to come forward. The Tampa Police Department will support you and ensure a predator like Zinger doesn’t cause you or others additional harm.”
Police say they were tipped off that Zinger allegedly had a relationship with a child between the ages of 12 and 15, and that following an investigation, they learned that she “communicated with the victim primarily through an online social media platform.”
Sometimes it’s religious. My daughter was due to start kindergarten at the tail end of COVID lockdowns, so my wife and I were looking at options that didn’t involve her sitting in a room with 20+ kids… There are people that will homeschool small groups of kids, like 5 or so, and the public school system will pay them per kid so there’s no out of pocket cost to the parents. We interviewed with one family, and it was looking like it might be worth doing, they were obviously religious, but not obviously nutjobs, and I’m ok with my kids seeing that religion is out there as long as it’s not being forced on them… But then the mom said those magic words, evolution is “just one theory” and I couldn’t get past that. We ended up enrolling her in an online kindergarten.