Names and faces
■ Karen Pence’s return to teaching at a Virginia school that lists “homosexual or lesbian sexual activity” as among the disqualifying criteria for employees is drawing criticism from the nation’s largest gay-rights advocacy group. The office of the vice president’s wife said it was “absurd” to attack both her decision to resume teaching art to elementary students as well as the school’s religious doctrine. Pence began in the classroom at Immanuel Christian School in northern Virginia on Tuesday and will teach twice a week until May. She has taught for 25 years, including previously at Immanuel Christian, before Vice President Mike Pence, who was a GOP congressman from Indiana, was elected governor. The school has a policy that states it can refuse permission to a job applicant or discontinue enrollment of a student if the conduct within the student’s home is counter to the “biblical lifestyle” the school teaches. Activities listed as counter to that lifestyle include “homosexual activity or bisexual activity.” The Human Rights Campaign tweeted that the “Pences never seem to miss an opportunity to show their public service only extends to some.” A spokesman for Karen Pence defended her return to the school where she had taught for a dozen years. “It’s absurd that her decision to teach art to children at a Christian school, and the school’s religious beliefs, are under attack,” Kara Brooks said.
■ Chris Hansen, a television journalist known for confronting wouldbe child predators has been snared himself in a police investigation alleging that he wrote bad checks for $13,000 worth of marketing materials. Hansen, the former host of To Catch
a Predator, was arrested Monday in his hometown of Stamford, Conn. He was charged with issuing a bad check and released on signed, written promise to appear in court. Police say the 59-year-old Hansen wrote two bad checks to a vendor for 355 mugs, 288 T-shirts and 650 vinyl decals he bought in the summer of 2017. In a police affidavit, police investigator Sean Coughlin wrote that he warned Hansen in 2018 that he had been given ample time to pay the invoice, and if he failed to do so, he would be arrested for larceny. “I told Chris that I understood that he may have trouble, but that nearly $13,000 is a lot of money to a ‘mom-and-pop’ business and it is not fair that he accepted the material but hasn’t paid for it,” Coughlin said in the affidavit. Contact information for Hansen could not be found. It wasn’t clear if he has a lawyer who could respond to the allegations. NBC’s To
Catch a Predator ran from 2004 to 2007 and included sting operations for online child predators.