A former Lansing and Melvindale middle school teacher is due in court today for a pre-trial hearing on a felony charge of soliciting a minor for prostitution.
60 year old Jeffrey Howenstine of Haslett had been a once-popular teacher at the Otto Middle School in 2002 when he was charged with urging a 15 year old girl to perform a sex act.
He went to trial, but was acquitted.
Two months later, school officials paid him 120-thousand dollars to leave his job.
He then spent nine years as a school band director in Melvindale before retiring in 2013.
Last year he was charged with paying for sex in 2014 with at least two women that he knew had been forced into sex trafficking.
One of them was a minor at the time.
Howenstine told police he has a sex addiction … that he knew the women were victims of trafficking, but that he was afraid of the man who controlled them.
He denied that he knew any of the women he solicited were minors.