Woman Posed As 15 Year Old And Goes Back To School

Charity Stevens seemed like a normal sophomore walking the halls of New Life Christian School in Longview, Texas - except for the fact that she was 34 years old. The woman, whose real name is Charity Ann Johnson, was arrested Monday night- more than six months after she enrolled in the high school pretending to be a 15-year-old orphan. According to school officials, Ms Johnson came to New Life Christian School last October accompanied by a guardian who turned out to be younger than the fake tenth-grader. Continue after the cut....

During the enrollment process, Johnson gave the name Charity Stevens and indicated that she was 15 years old. Tamica Lincoln, 30, who took on the role of Johnson's guardian last March, told the station KLTV the bogus teenager told her that she had been abused by her biological father, who has since died along with her mother. The two women met while working at a McDonald's together. Johnson told Lincoln that she had no place to stay after losing her parents. 

Lincoln brought the suspected con artist four years her senior into her home 'as a child,' bought her clothes and did her hair. She even attended parent-teacher conferences to talk about the fake sophomore’s impressive academic performance.  'She acted like a kid. She did her homework. She got good report cards,' the 30-year-old Longview resident told ABC News. Johnson’s web of lies began unraveling when Lincoln got a call from the head of a group that helps children in need, which the 34-year-old had allegedly tried to join. 

 

The woman told Lincoln that she ran a background check on 'Charity Stevens,' which provided more questions than answers. Lincoln then decided to make inquires of her own and called a manager at the McDonald's where both she and Johnson worked. The staffer pulled up the high schooler's file, which indicated that her birth year was 1979 and her real name Charity Johnson. 

Lincoln and the phony orphan’s mentor, Ray Ward, alerted police to the alleged fraud before heading over to the high school. ‘Teachers were crying and students were crying, and her best friend just couldn't believe it,’ Lincoln said. School officials said Johnson came in last October as a home-schooled student without any prior transcripts. Officers who responded to Lincoln’s Longview home  asked Johnson to identify herself, and in response she gave them the name Charity Stevens – the same moniker used on her school application. 

The woman has been charged with failure to identify/giving false, fictitious information. She remains in the Gregg County Jail on $500 bond. Looking at Johnson’s fake Facebook,Twitter and Instagram account created under the nickname Charite, it is easy to understand how those around her could have bought in to her tale of woes. In the photos posted online, Johnson looks like a shy, fresh-faced girl with a pink bow in her neatly combed hair and sparkly manicure.

However, in her booking photo, Johnson dressed in a striped jail garb looks not a day younger than her 34 years, with a lined, puffy face and a tangle of hair. 

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