Suit accuses former coach of raping middle school student
A lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court in Chicago accuses a fired Concordia University baseball coach of drugging and raping a 13-year-old boy in the mid-1990s.
In the suit, Spiro Lempesis is accused of sexually assaulting the Burr Ridge Middle School student starting in eighth grade and continuing until the boy was a junior in high school.
The plaintiff in the suit is the former student, Adam Kelley. The defendants are Lempesis, School District 180 and Burr Ridge Middle School. The school district is accused of negligence.
The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court. Officials with the school district could not be reached for comment.
The lawsuit also alleges that Lempesis repeatedly threatened Kelley and his mother and sister, displaying a handgun and knife to the boy as a warning not to tell anyone.
Besides his teaching duties at Burr Ridge Middle School, Lempesis also was faculty adviser to the school’s booster club. Kelley’s mother was the booster club president.
Reached by phone Tuesday evening, Lempesis denied the allegations in the lawsuit, calling them “garbage.”
The new allegations come in the wake of a lawsuit filed in May against Lempesis and Concordia University, where Lempesis was head baseball coach from 2001 to 2010. That lawsuit accuses Lempesis of using his position to persuade a Concordia player to perform sex acts on camera in return for Lempesis working to advance his baseball career.