Teacher Sex Gets Emotional Response and Eight Years Prison

Molesting teacher is sentenced | Chula Vista woman gets 8 years for sexually involving 2 boys

BILL CALLAHAN Staff Writer SAN DIEGO U-T 25-October-1994 Tuesday

A Chula Vista substitute teacher who said her loneliness drove her to molest two elementary school students -- one more than 100 times -- was sentenced to eight years in prison yesterday.

Cindy D., 26, offered a sobbing apology in San Diego Municipal Court to the angry parents of the two boys, one of whom she said she fell in love with.

"I wish there were words I could say that could take away all the pain and emotions involved," she said. "I know the words `I'm sorry' sound so insincere, but I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

The parents were not moved.

"She is a teacher, someone that he was supposed to trust," said the mother of one of the boys. "We tell our kids to trust their parents and trust their teachers. It's people like this that zone in on good kids.

"His innocence was taken away. She's the adult. She had over a year to think about what she was doing and she kept on doing it."

Deputy District Attorney Laura Rogers said the sexual offenses occurred between Sept. 1, 1993, and this July 6, about two weeks before Cindy D. was arrested.

Police were contacted when a psychologist to whom the part-time instructor went for help about emotional problems reported Cindy D.'s admissions of the molestations to the county's Child Protective Services.

Rogers acknowledged Cindy D.'s comments about a lengthy family history of mental problems but said she committed an unforgivable breach of trust in her position as a teacher.

"She was an adult working with children," Rogers told Judge Janet Kintner.

"She had all these mental faculties to say no, but she chose not to. Her actions were solely selfish. She wanted love and attention, and she sought it out in a wholly inappropriate way."

Rogers said the two boys were both 11 when the molestations began. Cindy D. tutored one in his home and was sexually involved with him at least 100 times, the prosecutor said. The other boy was molested one time, in the company of the other child, Rogers said.

"It was like a sex fest going on at her house, not that there was other sexual conduct going on, but in that she was introducing children to (sexually explicit) material before they became adults," Rogers said.

Cindy D. admitted renting X-rated videos that were shown to the boys and other elementary students and providing the boy with whom she claimed to be in love with alcohol, tobacco and food.

She also allowed him to drive her car in a joyride on the freeway when he was 12 and provided him and other students with water balloons and eggs that were used in "bombing runs," according to a probation report filed in the case.

Cindy D. depicted herself in that report as a desperately lonely woman, unable to establish relationships with adult males or females; one who initiated an illicit affair with a boy to satisfy her emotional needs.

"I had such an emptiness inside me for so many years I didn't listen to my conscience telling me that he was just a boy," Cindy D. told her probation officer.

"He filled that emptiness, and I thought it was love. I knew what was right and wrong, I just didn't believe in myself enough to listen. All I wanted was happiness."

Cindy D. also denied she used the movies, alcohol and permissive behavior to seduce the boy.

She said those actions were prompted by a desire for acceptance by the boy and other children who realized they could manipulate her to their advantage.

"I did this because I couldn't lose (the boy)," she said.

(The boys names are not being revealed because it is the policy of The San Diego Union-Tribune not to publish the names of victims of sexual crimes.)

Cindy D.'s lawyer, Deputy Public Defender Dawn Ella Gilzean, unsuccessfully requested that Cindy D. be spared a prison term so that she could continue undergoing therapy for deep-seated emotional problems.

Gilzean noted that Cindy D. admitted her crimes immediately after she was contacted by police and pleaded guilty early in the criminal proceedings to spare the children the further possible emotional trauma of testifying in court.