Emma Delaney Hancock (Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office)
A since fired substitute teacher in Wellston, Oklahoma, who happens to be the wife of the local police chief and the daughter of the local mayor, faces an upcoming trial in October for alleged sex offenses against a 15-year-old male student, but as of late June she was hit with another legal threat: a civil lawsuit filed by the boy’s father.
Emma Delaney Hancock, 27, responded to the sexual assault and battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress suit as recently as Tuesday, denying the allegations, listing a series of affirmative defenses, and demanding through a lawyer that a judge put the parent on the hook for the costs of “having to defend herself” in the case.
Law&Crime is not linking to the lawsuit or Hancock’s answer to it because the documents name the alleged victim’s father and provide the teen’s initials. The suit largely repeats allegations made from an April 2023 affidavit of probable cause that claimed Hancock solicited sexual conduct or communication with a minor by use of technology and committed lewd or indecent acts against a child under the age of 16 between October 2022 and November 2022 at Wellston High School.
One of the soliciting sexual conduct or communication charges stems from allegations that Hancock showed “videos of herself kissing an unidentified female and simulating oral sex on a fake penis” to other 15- and 13-year-old students.
Hancock has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges, but the lawsuit provided more details about how the school is said to have informed the father of his son’s alleged abuse and what happened next.
The documents said that the principal at the school on Nov. 3, 2022 asked for a meeting to “discuss concerns that a teacher was engaging in an inappropriate ‘relationship’ with” his son, based on reports from “other teachers and students.”
After the meeting, the lawsuit said, the father asked his son if it was true.
The son “confided that he was having a ‘relationship’ with his teacher,” documents said. “When pressed to describe what exactly he meant by the word relationship, [the victim] gave examples of him and the teacher, Emma Delaney Hancock, touching each other in an inappropriate sexual manner.”
“Specifically, as to what happened at school, [the victim] gave examples and explained the various ways the teacher sexually molested him while they were alone together in the school’s classroom,” the suit continued, claiming Hancock “intentionally touched and viewed the body and person of [the victim], a minor and a student, for sexual gratification” and that she did so with “a prurient purpose in mind during each instance.”
The suit, tracking allegations from the criminal case, alleged that Hancock began grooming the victim when responding to a post on the teen’s Snapchat, where he posted shirtless pictures.
As Law&Crime previously reported, Hancock allegedly asked, “Are we sending half naked pictures now?”
“I don’t know, are we?” the student answered, the lawsuit also said.
“Are you trying to get me to lose my job?” Hancock allegedly replied.
Thereafter, Hancock allegedly “snapped a picture from her bath tub, about six inches above her knees and down,” and later “a picture with a blanket covering her breast downward.”
When the student asked Hancock to “move the blanket,” she allegedly “sent another picture with the blanket moved showing her breasts.”
Hancock’s Snapchat conduct allegedly escalated to sending “nudes and masturbation snap videos back and forth” with the minor and subsequent illicit sexual contact at school.
Authorities have said the substitute teacher “aggressively kissed” the minor, putting “her tongue in his mouth four or five times,” and “rubbed the teen’s crotch area.”
In response to the civil lawsuit, Hancock argued that Judge John G. Canavan, the jurist assigned to both the civil and criminal cases, should end up dismissing the suit on several grounds, including lack of subject matter jurisdiction and failure to state claim, as she maintains she has “committed no wrongful or actionable conduct.”
At the end of the answer to the civil suit, Hancock’s lawyer as the judge to award her “fees and costs for having to defend herself against this action, and for such other and further relief to which she may be justly entitled[.]”
An unidentified parent of an alleged victim back in December reportedly spoke with local NBC affiliate KFOR and wondered why the defendant was allowed to set up “her food truck” at Wellston’s Christmas parade, considering the “children involved could walk up unknowingly and be face to face with her.”
The parent, noting that Hancock is the wife of Wellston Police Chief Alfred Hancock and the daughter of Wellston Mayor Paul Whitnah, suggested that the defendant was receiving special treatment.
“It makes me wonder if anyone else under these circumstances would have been allowed to set up if their father wasn’t the town mayor or their husband wasn’t the chief of police,” the parent reportedly said, calling for the police chief and mayor to “step down.”
Law&Crime on Friday reached out to the defendant’s attorney Billy Coyle and to Scott Adams, the attorney of record for the plaintiff in the civil case, for comment.
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