Former Chicago special education teacher charged with sex assault of 8th grade student

A former Chicago Public Schools special education teacher has been charged with sexually assaulting a teenage boy who was in eighth grade at the school where the woman taught, officials said.

Sara Damyan, 33, of the 600 block of West Irving Park Road, was ordered held Tuesday on $150,000 bond by Cook County Judge Susana Ortiz. Her attorney said she had turned herself in at Belmont Area Police Headquarters about 10 a.m. Monday after learning she was wanted and she was charged with criminal sexual assault of a victim between ages 13 and 17. Prosecutors said he was 14 and in eighth grade, although police said he was 13; he was not a student of Damyan’s but attended the school where she taught, according to prosecutors.

The assaults happened at a home in the 2400 block of North Kedzie Avenuebetween Jan. 15 and March 8, 2019, police said. Prosecutors said the home was where Damyan lived.

Damyan offered to tutor the boy and other students after school and often brought the group snacks and gave her cellphone number to them, prosecutors said. After someone required to report suspected abuse alerted school personnel in March 2019 to the relationship, which included Damyan providing marijuana to the student, the office of the inspector general for the Chicago Board of Education launched an investigation.

The investigation turned up some 12,000 communications between the student and Damyan, most of which were text messages and about 100 of which were phone calls, some made to the student’s home, prosecutors said.

When allegations were “brought to the attention of school leadership and district officials in March” 2019 the Board of Education removed Damyan from her position working with students and launched an investigation, said James Gherardi, a spokesman for the Chicago Public Schools.

The teen started to share his feelings with Damyan, who eventually told the boy she liked him, prosecutors said. The boy had reservations about the age difference at first, but later told her he thought they should “go out together,” prosecutors said.

She invited him to her home and provided instructions on how to get there by bus, prosecutors said. When he arrived, she gave him tea laced with marijuana and cannabis gummy bears, according to prosecutors. The two watched a movie and she sexually assaulted him and he wanted to leave, so he told her he had to go home, after which she texted him not to tell anyone about what happened, prosecutors said.

The next day, the boy again went to her home and watched a movie and again he was sexually assaulted, prosecutors said. He again felt uncomfortable and left, prosecutors said.

Later, Damyan told a friend that the teen was her boyfriend and told the friend they had sex, according to prosecutors. She brought a teddy bear to the friend’s house and said she used a small hole in the stuffed animal to sneak marijuana vape pens onto school property, where she would smoke with the student she’d called her boyfriend, according to prosecutors. The friend, who was in a job that required reporting illegal activity involving minors, shared the information with the school, prompting the investigation.

Damyan had been employed as an elementary-level special education teacher at the Alessandro Volta School, 4950 N. Avers Ave., until September of last year, according to a database of Chicago public schools teachers. She did not appear on a subsequent school teaching roster and Gherardi said her employment ended that month and she had not been in a classroom setting since the investigation was launched in March.

Chicago Tribune’s Megan Crepeau and Hannah Leone contributed.

kdouglas@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @312BreakingNews

___

(c)2020 the Chicago Tribune

Visit the Chicago Tribune at www.chicagotribune.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.