Woman discovers her accused sex abuser is still teaching at school 25 years later, IL lawsuit says

An Illinois school district is facing charges after a former student discovered that a teacher accused of sexually assaulting her 25 years ago was still teaching.

The victim was 11 years old when the abuse startedand she lasted two years, from 1998 to 2000, while attending Westchester Middle School, law firm Salvi, Schostok & Pritchard said in a Nov. 11 news release, following the recent Cook County lawsuit.

When allegations surfaced against the teacher, Dawn Chester, her career did not end, and the extent of her punishment was an injunction, the lawsuit said.

But a chance discovery by her victim earlier this year changed that: leading to Chester’s arrest in August on a charge of aggravated criminal sexual abuse, Westchester police said in a news release.

However, now that so many years had passed, the lawsuit said Chester would have had ample opportunity to target more students — and a lack of action by Westchester School District 92 1/2 allowed Chester to continue working with children.

“(Chester), who resigned from her teaching and coaching positions in Westchester in August 2000, went on to teach at another Chicago-area high school for more than two decades, leading attorneys to believe she may have additional victims,” the company said. .

After leaving Westchester, Chester got a job at Berkeley School District 87, where she worked as a teacher and coach for more than 20 years, the lawsuit said.

McClatchy News reached out to Westchester Public Schools for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

However, in a statement released after Chester’s arrest last summer, the district said that while there is now a requirement for school districts to inform state and regional school superintendents of teachers who may be abusive or dangerous, such requirement did not exist in education. 2000.

Red flags

Chester showed a lot of “personal interest” in the victim, police say, “writing her dozens of personal letters and notes, routinely orchestrating times when she was alone with the student and touching her in a sexual manner.”

“When I hear someone call your name, I feel my heart smile,” one of the letters said, according to the lawsuit.

“I find it difficult to go entire days without talking to you,” said another, according to the lawsuit.

In each letter, Chester is also accused of reminding the girl that what they did was a secret she couldn’t tell anyone.

In 2000, the volleyball team had a sleepover. Chester supervised the event as a coach, the lawsuit said. While the other players slept in sleeping bags all around them, Chester had the victim join him on an air mattress, according to the company.

Some saw this as a red flag, the company said, but the neighborhood apparently felt differently.

“It was later revealed that the Westchester superintendent recalled being informed of the incident by at least three students and one parent shortly after the sleepover, but did nothing to address the issue,” the attorneys for the woman.

On several occasions, Chester gave the student detention so she could get her alone and sexually assault her, the release said. For the same reason, she also told her to go to the bathroom or skip class, or come see her alone after class, the woman’s attorneys said.

The abuse only stopped after the girl’s mother found the letters Chester had sent her, the lawsuit said. The mother confronted school administrators with Chester and the district’s legal team, who said the letters “seemed to be ‘grooming’ in nature” and suggested she resign, which she did.

But “at no time” did the county report Chester to law enforcement, even though they were supposed to act as a “mandatory reporter,” the lawsuit said.

Disturbing discovery

More than twenty years later, in June 2024, Chester’s student, now a 37-year-old woman, made a disturbing discovery while surfing social media: Chester was teaching in another school district in Berkeley, a neighboring community just four miles north of Westchester. . Her name was different now — her name was Dawn Lach at the time of the abuse — and she worked at Northlake Middle School, according to the company.

The woman “immediately” contacted the school and local authorities, leading to Chester’s arrest, attorneys said.

It comes much later than it should, and their client’s school district is to blame, the company says.

“We intend to prove at trial that the Westchester School District and its employees violated their position of trust, and that their inaction allowed the defendant to continue her inappropriate relationship with our client, who was just a child at the moment of the abuse,” said the judge. said the woman’s attorney, David Rashid. “As a result of the sexual and emotional abuse, our client has suffered immensely in the twenty years since this happened. It is doubtful she will ever recover from the exploitation she suffered during high school, but we can prevent this from happening to another innocent child by holding those responsible for their negligence accountable.”

The woman’s lawyers are seeking $350,000 in damages, according to the lawsuit.

Westchester is a suburb of Chicago, about a 15-mile drive west of the city center.