Ex-Carpentersville teacher sentenced to 10 years for sex assaults
A former Carpentersville Middle School teacher was sentenced Friday to 10 years in prison for sexually assaulting and abusing two former students from summer 2013 through spring 2015.
Lindsay P. Anderson, 31, of Geneva faced a top prison term of 22 years after pleading guilty last year to aggravated criminal sexual assault and aggravated criminal sexual abuse of two male students from July 2013 and May 2015.
Anderson knew both victims, who were 14 and 15 at the time, from when she was employed at Carpentersville Middle School. However, she was not their teacher when the assaults occurred, according to Kane County prosecutors.
Kane County Judge D.J. Tegeler sentenced Anderson to four years in prison on the sexual assault charge and six years on the sexual abuse charge.
Anderson will serve a little more than six years. She must serve 85% of the four-year sentence but can have the six-year sentence halved for good behavior in prison.
During Friday's sentencing hearing, the mother of the 15-year-old victim told how her son was ridiculed by classmates and school officials after Anderson's arrest in 2015, dropped out of school and no longer trusts authority figures.
"Where we're from, we trust teachers," the woman said. She recalled becoming increasingly suspicious after Anderson texted her son, who she was initially helping as a math tutor, in the middle of the night.
Defense attorney Harry Smith noted Anderson, who has a daughter and is recently divorced, was treated at the age of 13 for depression and PTSD. After her arrest, she was diagnosed as bipolar.
Authorities began investigating in May 2015 after the mother of the 15-year-old boy called East Dundee police to report her suspicions. She told police Anderson would drive her son, who had since graduated from middle school, home from football practice and buy him gifts.
The boy told Kane County Child Advocacy Center investigators that Anderson picked him up once and the two went to a forest preserve where they smoked marijuana provided by Anderson and she assaulted him, according to the warrant.
Anderson later gave a video-recorded statement in which she admitted to the acts, according to the warrant.
Anderson also acknowledged sexual assaulting "several times" - including once in a Carpentersville movie theater parking lot - a 14-year-old boy, whom she knew from the middle school but saw only when he got into trouble, according the search warrant.
Anderson must register as a sex offender for the rest of her life.