Skin-crawling text messages allegedly sent by a married Illinois high school teacher to a 15-year-old student show her professing love and pining about having sex with him — and police say it’s proof she sexually assaulted the boy.
Christina Formella — a 30-year-old special ed. teacher and soccer coach at Downers Grove South High School — allegedly told the victim “I love having sex with you” and other lurid lines in 2023 text messages found on the boy’s phone Friday, court documents obtained by WGN9 show.
“I love you so so much mama,” the boy sent Formella in one text.
“I love you sooooo much baby… Even though this morning was short, it was perfect,” the teacher, then 28, allegedly responded.
“I know baby it was perfect baby so perfect,” the boy replied back, before Formella opined about how much she loved having sex with him.
“I know baby I love it so much… It feels so good… It’s so passionate. .. It’s so intimate … It’s so perfect,” the boy said.
Police took those messages as evidence that Formella was engaged in an inappropriate relationship with her student and was molesting him over two years ago — a protracted assault that allegedly began during a classroom tutoring session in December 2023 and continued until the boy eventually ended it.
After police arrested Formella in her Chicago suburb Sunday, they allegedly found writings in her phone’s “Notes” app that further suggested a sexual relationship with her underage student, the court documents showed.
But Formella claimed the material in that app was just an “outlet for her anxiety,” and that any sexual material was only about her husband.
The now-former teacher has flat-out denied the allegations, instead insisting she’s the victim of a frame job and “blackmail” from the boy she tutored and coached — and that people are targeting her because she’s “good-looking.”
“She claimed that one day, [the boy] had grabbed her phone unattended, had entered her passcode … had sent the message to his phone, had then deleted the message from her phone, and had saved it to his phone as blackmail,” court documents read.
“[Formella said] everybody comes after her because she is good looking and she is just a good person who cared too much about [the boy],” the documents stated.
The text messages were found Friday after the boy’s mother bought him a new phone. As they were setting it up, she logged into his iCloud account and discovered them.
She took her son to the Downer Grove Police station the same day and they reported the alleged abuse.
Formella was charged with two counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse and one count of criminal sexual assault, and was released on the condition that she not enter the school grounds or have contact with anybody under 18.
Wedding photos on social media appear to show Formella and her husband were married as recently as August. The college sweethearts were seen smiling and smooching in what appeared to be a happy and healthy relationship in the images.
She and her husband were student athletes together at Concordia University.
Formella began teaching at Downers Grove High in 2020 after earning her teaching license in 2017. She has since been placed on paid leave from her job.