In September, a high school teacher in Eaton County was arrested for trying to have sex with a 15-year-old boy he met on Grindr. The 15-year-old boy happened to be a detective who had been communicating with Waverly High School teacher Robert Herzing, 32, for months.
Over the course of their communications, Herzing admitted he was looking for a “friends with benefits” type of relationship. He also said he was a public school employee who taught journalism and reading.
When the detective asked Herzing if he wanted to meet up to have sex, Herzing said he’d only commit to meeting to talk, but that he’d be willing to do “anything you’d like,” according to police records.
Herzing agreed to meet the boy in person on Sept. 12 and was arrested in the parking lot of the Delta Township District Library. Police said they found a pink bag in Herzing’s car that “contained condoms, multiple [sex toys],” as well as a pair of fur-covered handcuffs, a bottle of “anal lube,” and a “large knife.”
Herzing has been charged with felonies for attempted third-degree criminal sexual conduct, accosting a child for immoral purposes, and using a computer to commit a crime.
After Herzing’s arrest, Waverly Community Schools officials claimed they were unaware he had been under investigation for sex crimes involving children. But the charges against Herzing shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone—least of all, school leadership. After all, the school district had placed Herzing under investigation just months prior for making inappropriate and sexual comments to his high school students.
In March, Herzing was placed on paid administrative leave by Waverly Community Schools, after several other Waverly High School employees overheard Herzing have sexually charged conversations with his students, according to a Freedom of Information Act request made by Michigan Enjoyer.
In one conversation, a student asked Herzing why girls are able to have multiple orgasms and boys are not. According to the witness, Herzing responded “that it takes a guy a while to recover but there are other things he can do while waiting.”
In another conversation, Herzing told a student that his penis “swings up” because “if it’s down, it gets sweaty at the base and can be smelly.”
Herzing also advised students on how to have anal sex, according to the investigation.
The school district issued Herzing a written warning and told him to make sure he “appropriately redirect[ed] inappropriate conversations promptly” before returning him to the classroom. Apparently, Herzing took their advice and redirected sexual conversations away from his own students and toward other teenagers online.
But even these revelations of Herzing’s disturbing conversations with students should not have come as a surprise to anyone at the school district—because this was not the first time Herzing had been accused of introducing his students to explicit and sexual subjects. In 2023, a Waverly parent reported that Herzing had provided her daughter access to Out and The Advocate, two LGBT publications that included “inappropriate” and “offensive” images. Herzing claimed afterward that he hadn’t meant to put those publications in his classroom library—just like I’m sure he hadn’t meant to bring condoms to his meet-up with a 15-year-old boy.
This long-running pattern of behavior warranted a far closer look than the school district was willing to give.
Herzing’s arrest also confirms that parents are well within their rights to raise concerns about the influx of sexually charged material in their children’s classrooms. This is not to say that every public school employee who waves a rainbow flag is a pedo. But it is simply a fact that every public school employee eager to force sexual content and conversations onto minors has some sort of agenda, some of which are legitimately criminal.
This really isn’t complicated. The only adults who should be talking to children about sex and sexuality are their parents. And any adult who refuses to respect these boundaries should be barred from entering a classroom.
Kaylee McGhee White is the Restoring America editor for the Washington Examiner, a Tony Blankley fellow for the Steamboat Institute, and a senior fellow for the Independent Women’s Forum. She grew up in Detroit and graduated from Hillsdale College. Follow her on X @KayleeDMcGhee.
