A grand jury has charged a former Alabama high school basketball coach — who only weeks ago coached her team to the state championship title game in her first season — with 32 grooming and sex charges with a student in the same school where her husband also coaches the male team.
Paige Adams, 35 was arrested Tuesday on the charges that included 30 counts of contributing obscene materials to a student, one count of a school employee having sexual contact with a student under the age of 19 and one count of an employee “engaging in a sex act or deviant sexual intercourse with a student,” according to CBS 42 in Birmingham.
The coach of the Cold Springs High School Eagles resigned after someone in the school district reportedly filed a formal complaint against her in late March.
The school is located in the town of Bremen, AL, with a population of only 3500, about 100 miles north of Birmingham. The school has only a little over 240 students but is rated in the top 10 in high schools for athletes in the state.
Neither the indictment nor Cullman County authorities specified whether the alleged victim was a female member of Adams’ basket team or a minor male who also went to the school.
Following her resignation from the school, her husband also took legal action in court.
According to the CBS affiliate:
Adams’ husband, Drew, filed for divorce from her on April 6, two weeks before she was arrested. They had been married since 2015 and have one child together, whom he has requested he be given sole custody. According to court documents, they separated the same month that she resigned from Cold Springs.
Drew Adams is the boys basketball coach at Cold Springs and took the job only last year after nine successful seasons as coach at another high school when his wife was named head female coach at Cold Springs.
He told told a local newspaper when he left the other school and took the job at Cold Springs he looked forward to them both coaching at the same school.
“This is the first formal complaint I have received regarding this employee,” Cullman County Schools Superintendent Shane Barnette said in a statement. “As soon as the concern was brought forward, an investigation was immediately initiated. The employee chose to resign at that time.”
Adams resigned after leading her girls to the state championship Class 2-A final in early March, but lost to North Sand Mountain Bisons in the title game, according to tournament coverage. Reports that the Eagles won that game by non-local news outlets are not accurate.
As a player, however, Adams did help lead Cold Springs to two state basketball championships before she graduated in 2009.
It wasn’t the first time the coach had resigned abruptly after one season, other news outlets reported.
Adams left as head coach of Holly Pond High School after just one season in 2017. Her father-in-law was head coach there before she took over.
The principal of Holly Pond told a local newspaper at the time, “She didn’t give much of a reason. She just needs to step away from coaching for a while.”
“I don’t know any of the direct details, but Mrs. Adams did a great job coaching this year for Holly Pond High School and she has been and will continue to be a great role model for the young people of Cullman County,” Cullman County Schools Superintendent Shane Barnette predicted back then.
Adams was released from jail after posting a $225,000 bond, is forced to wear an electronic tag, and could face 31 years in prison if convicted, according to news reports.
As Breitbart news has reported, so-called “educator sexual misconduct” comes in a variety of forms, not only involving teachers, but coaches, regular employees, school aides, and even administrators.
Breitbart’s exclusive report revealed that educator sexual misconduct in the past two decades has become “rampant” in the United States, occurring in school districts large and small and ranging from small town public schools to elite academies in large cities.
The field’s leading expert and researcher called the problem “100 times worse” than the highly publicized sex scandal that hit the Catholic church in past decades.
Veteran crime writer Lowell Cauffiel is the author of the New York Times true crime best seller House of Secrets , which documents one of the worst cases of child sex abuse in U.S. history, and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.