Middletown School Employee Arrested
Christine Powell (Middletown Police Department)

    By SHAWN R. BEALS, sbeals@courant.com The Hartford Courant
    7:56 p.m. EST, February 24, 2012

    MIDDLETOWN — —
    An alleged two-year relationship between a former Middletown High School teacher and a student raised concerns among fellow teachers and escalated from after-school tutoring to shopping trips to frequent sex, according to an arrest warrant unsealed Friday.
    A paraprofessional who worked with Christine Powell, who is charged with second-degree sexual assault, was so bothered by the alleged relationship that she eventually quit her job, the woman told police.

     Powell, 39, of 24 Dobson Circle, has pleaded not guilty, and her case has been continued to March 20. She is being held, with bail set at $150,000.
    She told police, according to the warrant, "that their relationship was more than about sex. She said that they truly loved each other and that they had planned on moving out of state together after the victim turned 18."
    The warrant, which describes the investigation and a series of interviews between Nov. 21 and Dec. 5, 2011, says that Powell's relationship with the student began in 2009 when he was in eighth grade and she was his teacher in a special education program at Woodrow Wilson Middle School. In an interview with a police detective, Powell said that she continued to tutor the student after he began attending Middletown High School, and he began baby-sitting her children in 2010. The relationship became sexual in April 2011, Powell told police.
    Powell, who resigned from her special education teaching job at Middletown High in late 2011, transferred from the middle school to the high school in the 2011-12 school year. According to the warrant, she transferred to the high school because of "drama" surrounding her co-workers; she "denied that it was to follow the victim to the school he was currently attending," according to the warrant.
    The alleged relationship attracted the notice of Powell's colleagues, according to the warrant, who became concerned about how much time she was spending with the student. According to the warrant, Robyn Johnson, a paraprofessional who worked with Powell at Woodrow Wilson, stopped by Powell's house "a couple of summers ago" and found the student and a friend swimming in Powell's pool. Powell, Johnson told police, answered the door "wearing only a bikini."
    Sarah Cardella, another paraprofessional assigned to work with Powell at Woodrow Wilson, told police that one time she tried to enter Powell's classroom, only to find it locked. When she unlocked it, she told police, the only two people in the room were Powell and the student, who "scrambled away" from each other when she entered. Cardella, who told police that the student received much more of Powell's attention than the other special education students, eventually quit her job because she was so uncomfortable with the situation, she said.
    Other teachers told police that they tried to tell Powell that it was wrong for her to spend time alone with the student both inside and outside of school, but said that Powell did not heed their advice.
    After the situation was brought to their attention, two school administrators — Associate Superintendent Barbara Senges and former Woodrow Wilson Principal Eugene Nocera — told Powell that she was not to spend any time alone with the student, and if there was nobody else in her classroom she would have to tutor him in the library, the warrant says.
    Nocera, who is chairman of the board of education, did not return phone calls Friday. Superintendent Michael Frechette declined to comment.
    Police began to investigate in November 2011 after the student's mother went to police and said she was concerned that her son's relationship with a former teacher was sexual, according to the warrant. The mother told police that she found a pair of women's underwear and a class ring with Powell's name on it under the student's mattress.
    In an initial interview, the student told police that he thought of Powell as "a big sister" who helped him with his school work. In a later interview, he told police that he and Powell had a sexual relationship that started in April 2011. According to the warrant, the student "said that he was always willing to have sex with her and that she never forced or pressured him."
    When police interviewed Powell, according to the warrant, she initially denied that anything inappropriate happened with the student. But when the detective pulled out Powell's class ring and the underwear the student's mother had found, Powell admitted that they were hers.
    At first, she said she had no idea how the Victoria's Secret underwear had gotten into the student's home. The detective pressed Powell, told her that police were going to seek a search warrant for her iPhone and asked her if she had sent any naked photos of herself to the student.
    "She nodded her head and quietly said yes," according to the warrant. "I asked her if it was because they were having sex together," the detective wrote in the warrant, "and she said yes. She started to cry and said she was losing her job and going to jail."