Concord Monitor – Former Concord teacher Howie Leung charged with sexual assault in New Hampshire

Howie Leung, a former Concord teacher serving a prison sentence in Massachusetts for sexually abusing a Concord student during a summer program there, faces a new sexual assault charge in New Hampshire, Concord police and Merrimack County District Attorney Paul Halvorsen announced Thursday.

Prosecutors accuse Leung, who worked as a special education teacher at Rundlett Middle School and Concord High from 2006 to 2019, of repeatedly sexually abusing the same student in Concord whose rape he pleaded guilty to in Massachusetts.

The assaults in Concord allegedly occurred between 2014 and 2016, according to court documents, beginning when the girl was 12 or 13 years old.

The new charges, long speculated about, open a new chapter in the Leung scandal that rocked the Concord school district when the teacher was arrested in 2019 and led to the resignations of former Superintendent Terri Forsten and Principal Tom Sica.

Although an investigator concluded that the sexual relationship between Leung and the student who has spoken publicly about her suffering began in Concord, the criminal case was continued in Massachusetts because the charges there are more serious, Concord Deputy Police Chief John Thomas previously told the Monitor.

Thomas and Halvorsen, the Merrimack County prosecutor, both declined comment Friday. The state public defender's office, which is representing Leung, did not respond to a request for comment.

Leung is currently serving a six- to seven-year sentence in a state prison in Gardner, Massachusetts, after pleading guilty to the rape of two children last July. Those rapes occurred at the Fessenden School in Newton, Massachusetts, during a summer program where Leung worked and the student served as an unpaid aide.

“He brought students from up here in Concord to help with the program,” Concord Police Lieutenant Sean Ford said after Leung was indicted on the Massachusetts charges in 2019.

The 39-count indictment announced Thursday alleges that Leung kissed the student and touched her breasts during the fall or winter of the 2014-15 school year while she was a student at Rundlett. The majority of the charges relate to repeated digital penetration and oral sex during the summer of 2015.

Leung is also accused of attempting to trick another student into lying and deleting files on his electronic devices during the investigation in late 2018 or 2019.

“The district is grateful to the Concord Police Department and the Merrimack County District Attorney’s Office for their ongoing investigation and efforts to seek justice for the egregious actions of former teacher Howie Leung,” Concord Principal Kathleen Murphy wrote in a statement.

Murphy wrote that the district has since “adopted policies, procedures and practices to ensure that this does not happen.”

Leung is scheduled to be arraigned on the new charges in Merrimack County Superior Court on October 7.

Jeremy Margolis can be contacted at [email protected]..