A former professor at the University of Tennessee has been charged with assaulting one of her old students.
Judy Morelock was arrested yesterday and later released on bail after she attacked Kayla Parker, a senior at UT and a previous student of Morelock’s.
According to Parker, “I was shopping in Earth Fare and talking with the cashier. The next thing I knew I was being grabbed and swung around. I couldn’t fathom who could be moving me with that force. When I turned around and saw my old professor standing there, saying ‘you evil bitch, you ruined my life,’ it took a minute to register what was happening. She was red in the face, yelling and screaming.
“There was complete silence in the store. The cashier gasped, everyone else looked down and stayed silent. They watched her check her groceries out and then left. I yelled at her: ‘Don’t touch me ever again.'”
Morelock admitted that she touched Parker in a letter to the victim’s mother but denied that it was an attack.
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“I allowed my temper to get out of control, came up to her while she was in a checkout lane, touched her left arm to get her attention, and told her she was an evil human being for disseminating derogatory allegations against me,” she wrote. “When she jumped back and yelled, ‘Don’t touch me, don’t touch me,’ I knew I had made a big mistake.”
She went on to say, “I did not put my hands (plural) on her or grab her. I had a container of food in my right hand. I apologize for touching her and for my hostile words, but there was nothing aggressive of violent in that half second touch.”
This was just the latest in a string of incidents involving Morelock and the student.
It started in class earlier this year when Parker asked a question about a class quiz on slavery. Morelock then started posting about the student on Facebook.
She called Parker, “simple-minded,” wrote that she wanted to “get her” and said, “trash me, and I will fight you.”
The professor also threatened to post Parker’s personal information on the internet.
“After the semester is over and she’s no longer my student,” she said, “I will post her name, her picture, and her bio on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Count on it. For now, I’m bound by university rules that grant her more latitude in freedom of speech than I have. After she graduates and I retire, all bets are off,” she wrote.
Morelock lost her job in June and Parker has been forced to take out an agreed order which is a step below a restraining order.
Depending on the charges laid she could be facing up to 11 months in jail or a $2,500 fine.