Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - 11 Horrific Details In Teacher Sex Scandal Revealed

Starting point is 00:00:00 Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. I don't understand what's going on here. Christina Formella faces dozens of charges related to allegations that she groomed and sexually abused a student. And now transcripts from court are revealing why prosecutors wanted her locked up in jail until her trial. I look at the salacious and disturbing claims. and what Formella's attorney said in response. Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Ann Janette Levy.

Starting point is 00:00:41 Horrific, shocking, and appalling. Those are three words, the judge presiding over Christina Formella's case used when describing her alleged behavior. Formella is the former Illinois special education teacher and soccer coach that we've been following since March. she's accused of grooming and sexually abusing a male student who used to attend South Downers Grove High School. We're taking a closer look at the specific allegations that prosecutors made following Formella's indictment in June when a grand jury indicted her on more than 50 counts, including criminal

Starting point is 00:01:14 sexual assault, aggravated criminal sexual abuse, six counts of indecent solicitation of a child, and six counts of grooming. In March, Formella was arrested, and at that time, police thought the sex with the teenage boy was a one-time thing happening in her classroom in December of 2023, but prosecutors say a follow-up interview with the teen and text messages revealed much, much more. Before we get into what was said in that hearing in June, let's take a look back at Formella's arrest in March. Hey, how you doing? Officer Gus, we're with Downer's Girl. Do you have your license on you? Yeah, I'm nice play. I'm sure you're confused. I'll spend anything to you. You're Christina?

Starting point is 00:01:58 Yes. Okay, Christina, do me favor. Can you step out of the car for me? I know you're confused. I'll explain everything to you. You don't have anything on you? You can grab whatever you need. Whatever I need?

Starting point is 00:02:08 Yeah, whatever you need. Your phone, your person, you're going to grab it. Is she going somewhere? Yeah, we're going to explain everything to you guys. The cops went back to pick up Christina Formella after the teenage boy's mom discovered text messages from an unidentified number on his phone that talked about sex. I don't understand what's going on here. I get it. You can go grab your things.

Starting point is 00:02:27 Can he come with me? Yes, yes. You stay there for right now. Sir to stay there, but yes, you can't. But come on back here. Should I shut the car off? Oh, yeah, yeah. Go ahead.

Starting point is 00:02:40 It goes off. Okay. So we do have an investigation going on. We have to talk to you about it at the police department. Okay? So we're going to spend everything to you there. It's not my investigation. I don't know.

Starting point is 00:02:55 details but you have to bring you there though okay so I get to put you in handcuffs and bring it to the police department just a down there yes unfortunately yes I'm like willing to go with I get it yeah unfortunately we have to do it that way to do me a favor we just take this off can I ask you what of course yeah it's not like I said it's not my investigation obviously we are here for a reason so go ahead and turn around for me So right now, you're being detained, and there is a detective that needs to talk to you at the police department. So we'll let, if your husband, you know, he can just come to the police department as well if he wants to wait for you there.

Starting point is 00:03:45 I'm like, I get it. You have a lot of questions. Yeah, everything's okay. We just need to talk to you at the police department. That's all. Nothing else on your pocket right on anything else? Just my phone. Just your phone. Good. Okay. Okay. I'm ready to sit in the back of this car on the other side. Once you get to the police department, you'll talk to the detective and he'll explain everything to you.

Starting point is 00:04:06 But you can't even give me like an idea as to what this is about? Other than this investigation, but I'm like I can really tell you more. Is he coming with me? We'll let him know right now. But I really would prefer that my husband's with me. Of course. Am I in trouble? Like I'm so lost right now.

Starting point is 00:05:12 I'm sure you are. Like I said, I can't answer any questions. I know you just tell you that right now you're made to take court investigation. And once you get there, they're going to fill you in and everything. Formella was taken to the. police station and interviewed and police said they found a memoir or diary of sorts in her phone in which she wrote about the teenage boy that she had victimized. Police said Formella claimed the teen boy was stalking her and that her husband knew about that. But when police asked her

Starting point is 00:05:41 husband about it, he just knew that the boy was a student at the school. I'm just going to put your seatbelt on you. Unless you're able to leave your shit down there. I'm sure you don't want a tissue or something? I'm feeling I'm going to throw up. A bag? That's cool. All right.

Starting point is 00:06:12 Sean, can you grab like a bag out of there? Hey, can you get like a bag just in case she gets nauseous? Yeah. I don't know. Do we have any of those emissus bags? like laying around the fine. I figure she was something better than nothing. Christina Formella was charged at that time with one count of criminal sexual assault and two

Starting point is 00:06:35 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse. A judge ordered her to not have any contact with the teen or go near the school. A few months passed and in June, Christina Formella was indicted by a grand jury on 52 additional counts, including those grooming and indecent solicitation of a child charges. The DuPage County State's attorney asked judge, Mia McPherson to order for Mella detained in jail until her trial. Assistant State's attorney Jacqueline McAndrew said during the June 17th hearing, We believe the proof is evident and the presumption great that the defendant committed criminal sexual assault, aggravated criminal sexual abuse, grooming, and indecent solicitation of a child. McAndrew continued, the next prong is whether the defendant poses a real and present threat and we believe that this prong has been met as well.

Starting point is 00:07:23 The defense did file a response, and its response seems to ignore the fact that at the initial detention hearing, which was on March 17th of 2025, Judge Deaton did find that this defendant did pose a danger to the victim in this case, and that was when it was believed that this was an isolated incident back in December of 2023. But now we know otherwise. Initially, police said that the victim told them that he and Formella had sex once in her classroom in December of 2023, but then after a second forensic interview, he revealed more about the abuse. McAndrew told the judge, so what this defendant did was she groomed the boy, and she started grooming the boy just months after he started high school at the age of 14. She manipulated him into believing that

Starting point is 00:08:09 he was the only one in her life that she had left her college boyfriend because she led the boy to believe that he was special. And this defendant did that to lure the teen into a false sense of security and comfort with her. If you've ever suffered from intrusive thoughts like unwanted violent images or sudden out-of-character urges, then you know how scary they can be. For people with OCD, these thoughts they don't pass like they do for the rest of us. OCD is one of the most misunderstood conditions. It's not just the stereotype of liking things neat. It's intrusive thoughts that stick and cause of cycle of overwhelming distress with no relief. But with specialized therapy, OCD doesn't need to be so debilitating and it's actually highly treatable.

Starting point is 00:08:52 That's where no CD comes in. NoCD is the world's leading OCD treatment provider. Their licensed therapists are trained in exposure and response prevention therapy, the most effective treatment available for OCD, so they've seen and heard it all. Plus, no CD is 100% virtual, provides support between sessions, and is covered by insurance for more than 155 million Americans. visit nocd.com to book a free call and get connected to someone who can help. And once she lured the boy in, she was the one who suggested that she and the boy have sex.

Starting point is 00:09:28 And not only did she suggest that they have sex, but she quite literally created an environment so that she could have sex with him. Now, I know that there are photos that are attached to the defense's response, and they seem to suggest that based on the way that the classroom is set up. and the fact that there is the window in this door that it's not possible that they could have had sex in secret because someone surely would have seen it. So it sounded like the defense was trying to say in some court documents that are not available to the public because they are sealed that the sex in the classroom couldn't have happened. But McAndrew told the judge during her

Starting point is 00:10:05 argument that it did happen and that Christina Formella sexually abused the boy at least 45 times. McAndrew said they had sex. so many times that the teen was able to describe the marks on the defendant's right butt cheek on her chest and in the middle of her back. And again, the defense attaches to its response, this arrest card, and says, well, the police didn't note any tattoos. And here the boy says, well, she does have a tattoo. The prosecutor said it didn't matter whether the police noticed that Christina Formella had a very small tattoo or not because they were only with her for a short time and the teenage boy, she said, was in a much better position to know that anyway because he had seen

Starting point is 00:10:47 her naked. The prosecutor also said that Formella and the teenage boy were almost caught in the act one time by another teacher. McAndrew said, the text messages are laid out in the petition and I am not going to rehash them. I know your honor has had an opportunity to review those, but there are text messages dated November 6th of 2023 at 8.45 p.m. on a Monday. day. And in those text messages, they discussed the fact that a teacher almost walked in on them. McAndrew continued. This defendant continued to abuse the teenage boy, despite the fact that in the midst of this, apparently the defendant's own neighbor had gotten caught doing the exact same thing she was doing, which was sexually abusing a high school student. And there are text messages between

Starting point is 00:11:36 the defendant and the boy dated November 4th of 2023. And she talks about how scared she is. because she just learned that her neighbor had gotten caught, so she knew what she was doing was wrong. But none of these close calls deterred her. The prosecutor said that Christina Formella instead manipulated the teenage boy in an effort to draw him even closer to her and even lured him to her home during the school day a year after the abuse started. And on five or six occasions, the prosecutor told the judge that Formella abused the boy at her home during school hours. McAndrew said, so the fact that the defendant coached on Thursdays doesn't mean that they didn't have sex because she abused him during school hours, not after school, during the school day. And it was confirmed by police that Thursdays were blocked days at Downer's Grove South. So that corroborates the teen's statement. And again, that explains why this defendant selected Thursdays to be the day that she lured the teen into her home to sexually abuse him. And again, she did this even after. one of her neighbors had seen the teen walking through the defendant's backyard and had confronted

Starting point is 00:12:46 the defendant about it. This was even after the defendant's own husband unexpectedly arrived home one Thursday morning. That didn't stop the defendant. Jacqueline McAndrew said the abuse happened in Formella's home that she shared with her husband, which was full of photos of them and engagement gifts all over the place. McAndrew said, Your Honor, it's the state's position that she is unbelievably conniving and unbelievably controlling. She ordered the teen to delete every single text message between the two of them. She ordered the boy to turn off his location data so that his parents would not know where he was. And she made sure to never be with the boy out in the open so that she could avoid detection by neighbors and by cameras. And this ability to manipulate the boy

Starting point is 00:13:34 enabled her to perpetrate the sexual abuse inside her own home in secret. The prosecutor said that Christina Formella sent nude photos and videos of herself to this teenage boy and in some she was saying his name while she was pleasuring herself and she also asked him to send photos of himself to her. In the transcript, Assistant State Attorney McAndrew said, Your Honor, this defendant is a real and present danger because not only did she sexually abuse this teen boy, she forced him to immortalize the abuse in videos and images in order to satisfy her own sexual urges and desires. But that's not even the full extent of the harm inflicted on this boy. In order to guarantee complete control over the boy, this defendant fed him one false narrative after another so that he wouldn't leave her.

Starting point is 00:14:28 At first she told him that she was not with her husband at all. Well, that was obviously a lie. Then she admitted that she was with him, but it was only because her husband. husband had information that could land her in jail. So she had to accept his proposal. Well, I am sure that's a lie. The argument continued with McAndrew telling the judge that Christina Formella planned to marry her husband, but then take him for millions. McAndrew said, but according to the defendant, she was still going to go through with this sham wedding in Italy and end up with millions of her husband's dollars. And then she and the teen would live happily ever after after his high school

Starting point is 00:15:05 graduation. That is one of the most preposterous stories ever. But your honor, the boy believed it because the teen was a child and she had complete and utter control over him. She even discussed with the teen wanting to have children. And she told the boy that if he couldn't be the father of her children, she would have no choice but to choose a sperm donor because in her words, it's you or nothing. She was still able to fool everybody. She manipulated the teenage boy's parents. She manipulated her colleagues. She manipulated her friends. She manipulated her family. She obviously manipulated the teen boy. And of course, she manipulated her own husband. The prosecutor was arguing to the judge that Christina Formello posed a threat to the victim in this case because she had admitted

Starting point is 00:15:54 to reaching out to him days before her arrest because he had been in a fight and she reached out to him via email and asked him if he was okay. And her home was within minutes of South Downers Grove High school where teenage boys would possibly walk past the house. The prosecutor said it was only by sheer luck that they recovered text messages off of Christina Formella's Apple account. This hearing was all about Christina Formella entering a not guilty plea and whether she should be detained in jail until her trial. The state said that she should be, but Formella's attorneys argued she should remain free with conditions. Attorney Richard Kane said, there is not one specific articulable fact that would cause any type of worry about anybody else in the community whatsoever.

Starting point is 00:16:39 There has never been an allegation of all the students that she saw in the school other than the teen that anybody was ever inappropriately contacted, spoken to in any which way at all. There is nobody in her neighborhood that ever complained that Christina ever did anything inappropriate with anybody else in the community. Kane continued. Judge, there was no contact, at least alleged, of any type of inappropriate conversations for nine months up until her arrest, Judge, I would point out that according to the state's petition, the last any type of real contact was in September of 2024. And at that point, if there was a relationship, it ended amicably. And there was never any further contact of any

Starting point is 00:17:23 inappropriate nature whatsoever for nine months, Judge. Kane also told Judge McPherson that Christina Formella underwent a risk assessment evaluation. Kane said, the Ohio risk assessment was done. Christina came back as a low risk. She scored a one. And the only reason she scored a one was because she is under 32 years of age. So judge, you have experts that interviewed our client, reviewed what facts they had in first appearance court and came back as a low risk. And judge, that hasn't changed. For Mellis defense team argued that prosecutors and police had evidence of the text messages showing the abuse happened more than once well before this June 17th, hearing, and if they believed she was a danger to the public or the teenage boy, they could

Starting point is 00:18:07 have made a motion before that time to detain her, but they didn't. The prosecution had asked that Formella be detained following her arrest in March, but that request was also denied. The judge found that Christina Formella started texting with the victim when he was 14 and was grooming him, and that the text messages backed up that a sexual relationship began when he was 15 years old. She called the behavior, as I mentioned earlier, horrific. shocking and appalling. But she placed restrictions on Formella like GPS monitoring and monitoring of her electronics so she could remain free out of jail pending trial. Christina Formella has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges that she faces. Prosecutors are still working to get all of the

Starting point is 00:18:52 evidence handed over to her defense team. Her next hearing is in January of 2026. So stay tuned. we'll keep on top of this case for you. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Janette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.

Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - 11 Horrific Details In Teacher Sex Scandal Revealed

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