Ex-school bus driver faces more sex charges

• Advocate Baker - Zachary bureau
• Published: Nov 20, 2009 - Page: 4B

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CLINTON — East Feliciana Parish sheriff’s deputies booked a man facing an aggravated rape charge with two additional counts Thursday, accusing him of inappropriate behavior with a student on his school bus in 2008.

Sheriff’s Detective Don McKey said William “Billy” Staton, 38, 5690 Brown Road, Ethel, was booked with indecent behavior with a juvenile and malfeasance in office.

A parish grand jury indicted Staton in August on the aggravated rape charge, alleging the sexual assault involved a girl younger than 13 and occurred between Aug. 1, 2007, and Aug. 1, 2008.

Grand jurors also charged his wife, Michelle H. Staton, with being an accessory after the fact to aggravated rape.

McKey said deputies recently learned, during a separate inquiry, that a girl who is now 11 told her parents that Staton kissed her as she got off the school bus in the spring of 2008.

McKey said detectives plan to subpoena Staton’s personnel records from the East Feliciana Parish School Board to determine if other incidents of alleged inappropriate conduct toward students were reported to the school system.

Deputies also are awaiting the results of DNA tests by the State Police crime lab in their investigation of a Dec. 6, 2007, incident involving a student who rode Staton’s bus, McKey said.

Staton is scheduled appear Tuesday in 21st Judicial District Court on his motion to have his $250,000 bail reduced.

School Superintendent Douglas Beauchamp, who served as assistant superintendent in spring 2008, said Staton resigned that year.“It was a mutual agreement that he needed to go,” Beauchamp said, but added that he cannot remember the details.

Beauchamp said Staton was among a group of bus drivers who often hugged, in a nonsexual way, the children who rode their buses, but the practice was stopped when a parent complained.

“That’s the only thing I know of,” the superintendent said.