A biology teacher at a Catholic all-girls school in New Orleans was fired and arrested for allegedly becoming sexually involved with one of her teenage students.
Police arrested Teddi Page, 29, last week for allegedly trading explicit texts and photos and having sex with the student, the New York Post reported Tuesday.
The relationship started last August after Page was hired to teach biology at the Academy of the Sacred Heart, according to the Times-Picayune.
According to the newspaper’s reading of a New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) affidavit:
During classroom introductions in August, the student, then 17, described feeling “‘a ‘spark’ between her and Page,” the police affidavit states. “Personal and intimate” conversations followed for two months, police said. In November, Page allegedly kissed and had sex with the teen at her Metairie apartment and in the victim’s vehicle. By then, the student, a senior, was 18.
After noticing changes in her daughter’s behavior, which included a short temper and locking herself away on a family vacation to video call with Page, the student’s mother accessed her social media accounts, the NOPD affidavit states. She discovered texts between Page and the victim and images of them nude and kissing, it says.
After the mother showed Sacred Heart’s principal the social media content the school fired the teacher and escorted her off campus.
Louisiana law makes it a crime for an educator to have sex or other sexual contact with a student who is at least 17 but younger than 21 if the educator is more than four years older and works at the student’s school.
At Page’s first appearance in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court a judge set her bond at $15,000, court records show.
Academy of the Sacred Heart Head of School released a statement to the newspaper that indicated no red flags came up in Page’s references and background check when she was hired.
“We are supporting the student and her family who have come forward and are providing resources and counseling for our students who may be upset about these developments,” a school spokesman said.
Veteran crime writer Lowell Cauffiel is the author of the New York Times true crime best seller House of Secrets and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.