Teen testifies Cy-Fair teacher pressured her into sex
The teenager on the witness stand Wednesday explained — with damning specificity — the way she was pushed, prodded and pressured into sex by her Cypress-Fairbanks math teacher in the fall of 2015.
The young woman, in a gray sweater and blackrimmed glasses, told jurors she was 16 when Alfredo Campos kissed her in his classroom, then convinced her to go on a dinner date, then, repeatedly, to a park where he cajoled her into the backseat of his red Mazda.
“He’s just really pushy,” she testified about the 31-year-old forcibly kissing her as she sat at her desk waiting for class to start. “He just shoved his tongue down my throat.”
All eight women and four men on the jury had furrowed brows and pursed lips as they listened to the teen explain that she worried about upsetting the “cool teacher” on campus.
“I didn’t know what to do,” the teen testified as her voice cracked. “I’m not good at math, and I thought he’d fail me.”
Campos pleaded guilty Tuesday as his trial was
about to start on two felony counts of sexual assault of a child under 17. He admitted they had sex at least two times in his car, then opted to let a jury decide his punishment, which could range from probation to 20 years in prison.
Defense attorneys for Campos are expected to cross-examine the teen Thursday.
The defense has been tight-lipped about strategy, but are expected to remind jurors that the teen stayed close to Campos after the encounters ended, enrolling in another semester of classes with him and continuing to sit next to him during lunchtime tutorials. She also messaged the teacher after the encounters ended.
On Wednesday, however, the teen testified for more than two hours that she did not want a physical relationship.
“I feel like he’s the worst person I’ve ever encountered,” she said. “I didn’t want to get on his bad side.”
She testified that after the first time he drove her to Bear Creek Park in northwest Houston, convinced her to watch a movie on a tablet computer in the backseat, then showed her his genitals, she felt she was “in too deep.”
She said she couldn’t stop the blur of subsequent meetings.
“I was in denial,” she said. “I kind of made excuses for him.”
She testified that Campos was a popular, laidback teacher who joked with the students and acted like a teenager himself. He was well-known at the school, she said, for rubbing student’s shoulders, sitting “too close” to the female students and messaging students on social media.
The jury heard that the married teacher told the teen he was having problems with his wife and that he was suicidal.
She described in graphic detail her physical and emotional pain.
“He would constantly make me feel bad for his problems, which weren’t my doing,” she said. “Pushing me to do things I didn’t want to do.”
Cy-Fair ISD officials started investigating the Cypress Ridge High School math teacher in November 2016, a year after the sexual acts began, because of an anonymous tip. He was arrested days later after Campos admitted to the sex and said it was consensual.
The sentencing phase is expected to last less than a week.