Ex-teacher’s aide sentenced in student sex case
WEST CHESTER » A former substitute administrative aide and teacher’s aide at Unionville High School was led from a Chester County courtroom in handcuffs Wednesday after being sentenced to prison by a judge who said she lived in a “fantasy world” of denying having sexual contact with two students.
“You don’t want to grow up,” Common Pleas Court Judge Patrick Carmody told Sheri Maufort before handing down an 11½ to 23-month term in Chester County Prison, a compromise between what the prosecution and defense had asked for in the case. “You have Peter Pan syndrome.”
Quoting from a letter of support that her father-inlaw had written on Maufort’s behalf, Carmody said, “the reason you wanted to work in school was to make sure your daughter wasn’t hanging with the wrong crowd,” he said, noting that the girl had been a student at Unionville and was friends with one of the victims. “The problem was, you were the wrong crowd.”
In addressing Carmody, Maufort disputed the prosecution’s contention that she had performed oral sex with one of the students, a 17-yearold, and kissed and fondled another student, who was 18 at the time. She said her only mistake was being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people.
“I want to apologize to the two boys for whatever pain my actions may have caused them and their families,” Maufort said in her statement, in which she catalogued the mental health problems she suffers from that kept her from remembering much of what occurred the night of the two incidents for which she was convicted. “I should never have put myself alone with teenage boys in any way.”
But Carmody said her denials of criminal culpability did her no good. He said he had thrown out the original sentence he planned to impose in favor of a longer one. In addition to the prison time she was led away to begin serving, she will be on probation for three years, and can have no unsupervised contact with minors outside of her own children. She must also register as a sex offender for 15 years.
Neither of the former students, who were both Unionville seniors at the time of the incidents in November 2016, attended the proceeding or wrote letters to the court about the impact the case had had on them. According to testimony, both were ambivalent about whether Maufort should have been arrested for her conduct.
Both Assistant District Attorney Erin O’Brien of the DA’s Child Abuse Unit and the defense attorney wrote sentencing memorandums that laid out what they thought Carmody should take into consideration in his sentence.
O’Brien asked Carmody to impose a prison term of two to four years, which would by law have to be served in state prison, plus an extra five years of probation. She also asked Carmody to make her undergo sex offender treatment.
The veteran child abuse prosecutor characterized Maufort’s behavior as using the school in which she worked as a resource for her sexual conquests.
“The defendant’s actions in using her school employment as a hunting ground for illicit and illegal relationships with students is deplorable and the court should consider her ongoing pattern of behavior, over the course of months leading up to September 2016, as an aggravating factor,” she wrote. Her “actions disgraced her, as well as the school district she served.
“Her behavior erodes a parent’s ability to trust that their children are safe and protected in school,” O’Brien wrote.
Addressing the two victims, O’Brien said that they had indeed suffered, even though such a relationship with an older woman might seem to some like a “badge of honor” for a teenage boy.