Bad Teachers: Christina Formella

0:02 Hey everyone, welcome back to Exposed Scandalous Files of the Elite. I'm your host, Jim Chapman, and it has been a little while, but I am finally back with something other than Sean Diddy Combs. And today do I have a Bad Teachers episode for you. I'm going to be telling you the story of Christina for Mela, and as I like to do, I'm gonna jump right into it. We're gonna start with a little background on Christina. She was born on December twenty ninth, nineteen ninety four, in Chicago, Illinois, and she was raised in what many would consider a typical middle class family. It was a two parent household.

0:48 She had a younger sister growing up, and she was very athletic growing up as well. As a matter of fact, throughout high school she played soccer and was an absolute standout soccer player in high school, so good in fact, that when she graduated from high school, she continued on with her soccer career in college, playing for Concordia University in Chicago. Now, she was also super smart, just prototypical all American girl. Right. She meets a guy in college and she would eventually marry him. His name was Michael Formela.

1:29 So she graduates college, she gets a degree in special education, she's going to go into teaching, and she moves on with life. Now by twenty twenty, she had found her career path, and that was as a teacher of special education at Downers Grove High School in Chicago. So from the looks of it, by this point, she is absolutely killing it. Christina Formela. She was dating one of the most prominent members of the Chicago community in Michael Formla. His family. They own a company. It specializes in food service. They supply condiments and all kinds of other things all over the nation to restaurants and grocery stores, things like that.

2:15 Over one hundred years in business, this company multi multimillions of dollars in value. So she's literally dating a member of a multimillion dollar family, very well known and very respected, this family in the Chicago, Illinois area. Now, even though she had started her teaching career in twenty twenty, it didn't stop her from going back to school and earning a master's degree, which she did in English, and from all accounts at this point, very well liked, very popular, very beautiful. All the things life seemed perfect for Christina Formela, so perfect in fact, that by August of twenty twenty four, she marries Michael and what can only be described as a fairytale wedding in Italy. But this perfect life would come crashing down when less than a year later, on March sixteenth of twenty twenty five, Christina, along with her husband, who was in the passenger seat of that vehicle, they get pulled over by Chicago police in her driveway of her very affluent Chicago neighborhood. And this happens. Listen to this club.

3:36 Hey, how you doing user gusmin with Donter's girl? Do you have your license on you. To night? Yeah? I'm I'm sure your confused. I was playing to you through the double doors. Christina. Okay, Christiane me favor. Can you step on the car for me. I know your confews ixplain everything to you. You don't have anything on you, just. You can grab whatever you need, whatever I need. Yeah, whatever you need to get phone your your first go and grab it. Is she going somewhere? Yeah, We're gonna explain everything to you. Guys. Go aha and grab up. We're not going anymore right now, of course, of course. Yeah, I don't understand what's going on here? O get Yeah, you can go to grab your things. Can you come with me? Yes?

4:16 Yes, you stay there right for right now the 're just stay there, but yes you can, but come on back here. Should shut the car off? Oh yeah, yeah, go ahead, it was off. Okay, sorry I pick up here. So we do have an investigation going on. We have to talk to you about it at the police department. Okay, so we went everything. To do there. It's not my investigation. I don't know the full details, but you have to bring you there though. Okay, So I get to put your handcuffs and bring it to the police department just to do yes. Unfortunately, yes, I'm willing to go with it. I get it. Yeah, Unfortunately, we have to do it that way to do you a favor.

4:57 Just take this off, can I ask you, Quesse? Of course? Yeah, it's not like I said that my investigation. Obviously we are here for a reason, so go ahead and turn around for me. So right now, just being detained and there is detective needs to talk to you at the police department. So we'll let If your husband no, he can just come to the police farmer as well. If he wants to wait for you there. I'm like, I get it. You're had a lot of questions.

5:37 Yeah, everything's okay. We just need to talk to you a pry that's all. Nothing else on your pocket right now and anything else. This is your phone here, okay, okay. And sitting back in this car on the other side. Once you get to the police department, you'll talk to the detective and hostline. Everything to you. But you can't even give me like an I at the. Moment that it's an investigation that's likely. Now I'm sorry, excuse me? Is my husband coming with Yes? Yeah, he said his phone up her down. We're staying in pus with him. We're just going to down or grow the septen minutes away. No, I know, but I really would prefer that my husband's with me. Of course, am I in trouble?

6:24 Like I'm so, I'm so lost right now, I'm like. She talked about right now, you're fadin more investigation. Never bring here in the listener and once you get there, we're gonna tell you that argues. So what you just heard was the bodycam footage of the officer obviously arresting Christina and they bring her to the station and at this time that this occurred. Christina is thirty years old, and Christina discovers after she gets there that she is accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a victim who, at the time of this inappropriate relationship when it started, was only fourteenth. So what brought this on? How did the police find out? Was this all a big mistake? Is she innocent and just being accused of this? We're going to get into it, so I'm going to read you the factual basis as they are referred to in this document. Around eleven five am on March fifteenth, twenty twenty five, victim and it's redacted, and his mother went to Downer's Grove Police Department to report a sexual assault committed by Christina Formella, who was soccer coach and teacher. The mother told officers the following in summary. On March eleventh of twenty twenty five, the victim's cell phone broke, so the mother purchased a new phone for the victim. On March fourteenth, twenty twenty five,

7:55 she receives this new cell phone, she signs into the icon cloud, at which point text messages start populating. At this time, the mother noticed a text thread with a phone number. However, there was no name and no photo, So she starts reading this thread and notices the following messages. The victim quote, I love you so much, mama, unknown number. I love you so much, baby. Even though this morning was short, it was perfect. The victim. I know, baby, it was perfect, baby, so perfect. Unknown number. I love having sex with you. The victim, I know, baby, I love it so much. It feels so good, it's so passionate, it's so intimate, it's so perfect. So the mother sees these messages, and what do you think of the first fucking thing she does? She goes to her son and she says, what is this? And who is this? And when questioned, the victim disclosed that this phone number belonged to Christina, his soccer coach. The mother was also able to confirm that this phone number belonged to Christina for Mela, because she had Christina's phone number saved in her phone. She had it because after her son had injured himself in soccer, she had been asking Christina for an injury update. The victim then disclosed he and the defendant exchange phone numbers

9:27 began flirtatiously texting with each other and ended up having sexual intercourse according to him at this time, once inside a classroom at Downers Grove South High School sometime in December of twenty twenty three. Now, at the time of that assault, the victim was fifteen years old and the defendant was twenty eight years old. So during the interview, officers learned that the victim had joined soccer in August of twenty twenty two, which was his freshman year, and the victim and Christina had been his soccer coach. Officers further learned that Christina had started tutoring this student this victim after he had broken his collarbone. Now, according to the mother, he did not continue to play soccer after his freshman year, even though he had played since he was eight years old, and his grades started dropping and she couldn't figure out why. So later that day, the Child Advocacy Center investigator conducts a forensic interview with this victim, and during that forensic interview, the victim confirmed that Christina had been his freshman soccer coach. She had started tutoring him after he had broken his collarbone, and he had broken it twice. It says once his freshman year in another time his sophomore year. The victim said he and Christina had began messaging each other through a school platform and that she had given him her phone numbers so

10:57 they could play an app that was no his eight ball pool game on Eyemassage. He said that was around a year and a half prior to this interview. The victim said that afterwards they had began exchanging what he turned as flirtatious text messages, and he said at one time Christina had facetimed him while she was Arizona. Now, according to the victim, he and Christina had developed feelings for each other. The victim said that one morning in December twenty twenty three, before school, he met up with Christina in her classroom. He said that Christina had closed the door, which automatically locked, and they had started kissing.

11:40 He said that he grabbed her butt and she grabbed his penis over his clothes, and then she removed his pants and his underwear and they both had to remove her leggings and it was at that point they engaged in sexual intercourse. While standing up, the victim said that he was wearing a condom and that they had sex until he ejaculated, and that he had subsequently flushed the condom down the toilet so that it was not in the classroom garbage. The victim said that Christina had told him that she liked it. According to the victim, he had last spoken with Christina in February of twenty twenty four, and they had both acknowledged it was wrong. According to the victim, he and Christina had sex only that one time, and he confirmed that it happened when he was fifteen years old. He said, at the time he believed that Christina was twenty six of twenty seven, but in actuality she was twenty eight. So that leads us up to the clip I just played you and I'll read a subnosis of that. Around two forty six pm on March sixteenth of twenty twenty five, detectives they conduct a traffic stop on Christina and took her into custody. They seized her phone. Detectives later searched that phone pursue it to her consent, and they found what they termed as a memoir in the notes section of her iPhone that was last updated at ten forty five am on March sixteenth

13:11 of twenty twenty five, the same freaking day she got pulled over. And then it quotes what those notes in that notes app said, and I'm going to quote the relevant parts. Quote I, once again, from day fucking one, called your next girlfriend. And then the name is redacted out and it says girlfriend's name. You're so fucking predictable and disgusting shocker. You cheated on me with her. All I was to you was somebody to fuck. I'm not upset, I'm not mad, I'm not any of that. I've just lost interest. I went back and screenshotted every single time that I said we should break up until after the wedding and after you graduated, and every single fucking time you came back and convinced me it would be fine.

14:00 I initiated every single breakup, only for you to end things saying you couldn't get over it. You ruined us. I warned you we should have never started dating a long, long, long fucking time ago, and you gas at me and convinced me it was fine every single time. Because that's who you are. We will never ever be together again. I'm not a second choice. I'm the best thing you'll ever have. Even with all of my mistakes, you once again waited and strung me along until it was convenient for you. It broke me last time. This time it changed me. I'm not sad. I'm fucking mad that I let a sixteen year old fuck with me like that, and I made a promise to myself I will never let any guy fuck with me like that again. Ever, in the end, we both lost. You lost the girl who would have stuck with you through thick and thin, who would have changed everything about herself to make you happy.

14:59 And I lost the per And I was before I met you. Unbelievable, y'all, unfreaking believable. This is a sixteen year old kid at this point. And further down in that notes app there was a section titled manifestations and it reads Victim's name, which is redacted out, is going to reach out to me soon and try to fix things between us. In the meantime, I'm going to live my best life knowing he's not the person I thought he was and that he is beneath me. So in addition to that, DETEC has found another note. This was dated November eleventh of twenty twenty four, which says the following and relevant part victim's name redacted out and I will connect again soon in a positive way. We will both get the closure we need in order to move on in a healthy way. We will be able to be a part of each other's lives forever. We will be in each other's lives forever. We will be able to love each other while also living our own lives.

16:05 Pretty damning information there. Jim, did you see what happened in Texas today? Wait before you tell me that, let me tell you what happened in New York. It cannot be as crazy as the case I told you about yesterday in Louisiana. You know what, we should do a podcast about it, and with that we did. Crime War Weekly covers the crime news headlines that have dominated the week. We cover trending crimes from all over the country and even sprinkle in a few globally. Crime War Weekly is available now wherever you listen to your podcasts, simply by searching Crime War Weekly or clicking the link in the description of this podcast now. Afterwards, detectives interviewed Christina Formela and she adamantly denies having sex with this kid. According to Christina, everybody comes after her because she's good looking. She's just a good person who cared too much about and it's redacted out now. In the same breath, Christina admitted that she knew her relationship was wrong, but that she was unable to stop it, she said, because she cares about him too much. So when confronted with the text messages found on this kid's phone, she claimed that one day, this kid had grabbed her phone unattended, entered her password,

17:35 which he allegedly knew because she said he saw her type it in her phone one day, and she said he sent the message to his phone from her phone and then deleted the message from her phone after he did that, and had saved it to his phone as blackmail. According to Christina, she had no idea these text messages even existed, so when they confronted her with these notes that they had found in her phone, Christina described those as an outlet for her anxiety. She said her anxiety was because her and this kid had opened up to each other. According to Christina, she didn't want to see this kid get into trouble like his older brother did, and Christina admitted that the entire March sixteenth, twenty twenty five, note was about this kid, but then she pivoted and she said any reference to sex was about her husband, not about the kid. So when I asked about the statements referencing cheating, Christina blamed the kid for cheating on her emotionally by having sex with his girlfriend, and she said that was because she cared about this kid and looked out for this kid, but they had never done anything.

18:55 So throughout the interview, Christina tried to paint this kid as a stalker, and she claimed that her husband was aware. But oddly enough, her husband, when they talked to him about that, he told detagtives he knew nothing about this kid beyond that he played soccer and she coached him at one point. He also confirmed that he does not go through Christina's phone. So despite her allegations against this kid, Christina did admit that she never reported anything to the administration at the school or to the kid's mother. Remembers she said this kid was practically stalking her, but she told nobody about this. So there you have that. Now.

19:37 It's important to note before we go any further. Christina, at this point, she's charged with two counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse in one count of sexual assault, and these are all classified as felonies in the state of Illinois. And as I told you, her story completely different than that of the victims. She claimed she was essentially set up by this victim because she was extremely attractive, and this victim formed a crush on her and made her a target. And I'm going to load some pictures of Christina, a few on the Facebook page and several more on the Patreon for Patreon members. You're not going to get any dispute from me that this kid probably had a crush on her. Any young man fourteen or fifteen would have had a crush on this teacher. She was beautiful, but she had some problems. So that's about the only thing that she probably said that was true. However, it looks to me like she was stalking this student, and we'll get into that a little further. So I'm going to play you another clip after they questioned Christina, because they weren't buying her story any more than I am and any more than you probably are, So they put her in the police car so they could take her and book her into jail, which is in another section in the building. She didn't like that too much. Here's what that sounded like, unless sir, you.

21:07 Ever sit down there? Sure you don't want a tissue or something? All right? Shana? You grab u bag out of there? Holy a fro driver? Hey can you get like a bag? She su case she gets nauseous. I don't know, do we have any of those amisodes bags like going around? I figure something better than. Here. You stay with her all the. Brother mm hmmm, God, what the fuck?

22:45 Let's kind of play on the floor here if you can tell us someon we're here if you need it, all. Right, thank you. So you heard that this chick is panicking, and rightfully so. She's in a ship pile of trouble by this point.

23:29 And it's interesting to note that this is March of twenty twenty five, and they didn't have any contact with each other since February of twenty twenty four, So in her mind, she's actually probably double shocked, if you will, because it's been fourteen months over a year since they even had contact with each other. She probably thought she was in the free and clear of all this stuff and would never be approached about this relationlationship after that time passed, but even though they hadn't spoken fourteen Moss she still had those affirmations on her phone, which she updated recently, and those affirmations really paint a picture of someone who is hoping that at some point in the future, this kid's going to surface again and they're going to renew things. She's actually trying to speak this into reality.

24:24 So on March seventeenth of twenty twenty five, she goes into her first court hearing and prosecutors they push at this point to keep her locked up. They don't want her to get bail, but that didn't happen. They did give her bail, and it seemed during this time that her husband, he's standing by her side. He believes his wife's story. So she makes bail and she has some conditions which were no contact with minors, no entry onto school property, GPS tracking device, and another interesting thing is she couldn't go within a certain amount of feet of the victim, and it was actually five thousand feet, but there was a problem with that in that the student worked at a facility that was less than five thousand feet from where Christina live, So the issue became she could not live at home with those conditions. So at some point they get to the judge and they ask him.

25:26 They explained to him that her home that she lives at with her husband is less than five thousand feet from where this kid worked, and they wanted the judge to lower the footage, if you will, to twenty five hundred feet, so that she could live at home, and the judge says, fuck you. He denies that, and so she has to go live with her parents, who are more than five thousand feet away from this minor, which incidentally, by this point is seventeen. So how did Christina start with this kid? How did this whole shit show start? How did it get to this point, etc. Well, from what is allege, the whole relationship started via the school messaging system, as I told you. From there, the student and Christina started communicating on an app called a ballpool.

26:21 And look, I'm going to deviate here for a second, but in tons of these cases that I cover on bad teachers, that's how they start communicating. It's not reach out via I Message anymore. They're smarter than that. What they do is they go through apps like this eight ball Pool, where you can message while you're playing the game, and they don't play the game, they just message the whole time. And that's a grooming technique, right, Otherwise, why would a teacher want to play a ballpool with a fourteen fifteen year old kid. So not only do some of the messages get out, but what really gets out that is shocking is that when Christina was out of town, they would FaceTime each other. Get this, Even when she was in Italy preparing for her wedding, she was facetiming this student. Holy smokes, how did the actual sexual relationship start, you may wonder. Well, in December of twenty twenty three, that first sexual encounter happened in the classroom before school.

27:28 At that time, the student was fifteen, Christina was twenty eight. Now, this was, in the perception of the public, the only time they had sex. This looked like a one time deal. Not that that's okay and a great thing, but compared to what we're about to find out, it's a hell of a lot better. And I'm sure her husband also thought it was a one time thing. But things would go from bad to worse for Christina. At a hearing on June seventeenth of twenty twenty five, Christina shows up to that hearing hand in hand with her husband. She's dressed to the nines. She looks beautiful and confident when she walked into that hearing, not so much when she walked out of it. At that hearing, Christina gets hit with another hold onto your hat fifty two charges on top of the already three felonies that I told you about, So that brings the entire total to fifty five counts.

28:30 You're talking at this point, this girl is facing over sixty years in prison, and the most surprised person outside of Christina that all these other charges came out probably her husband. She gets hit with an additional twenty counts of criminal sexual assault, an additional twenty counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse, six counts of indecent solicitation of a child, in six counts of grooming. Now why the jumping charges, Well, the police actually had time to build that case beyond those two counts. They start digging into these text messages.

29:11 They start seeing a lot of wild shit taking place in those text messages. They learned that this was not a one time thing. In fact, this was an ongoing relationship over two years with this student. The prosecutor said they had found thousands of text messages, and not friendly sorts of text messages or even just flirty sorts. We're talking confessions of love, plans to meet at all kinds of different places, about how they're going to keep this secret hidden from everyone. And it seemed when reviewing these texts that the initiator of all of this, to no surprise to me, was Christina Formela Chi was not only lying to her husband, she was also lying to this kid.

30:06 She had told the kid at one point she wasn't even with Michael anymore, and this kid started pressing her on this, realizing she was lying, and then she makes this crazy claim in these texts of this kid that she had to marry Michael because he was blackmailing her with some stuff and she would go to jail if she didn't marry him. Just total made up bullshit. She went so far, in fact with that particular lie. The police learned, and I'm going to jump ahead a little bit, but police learned they had sex at her house several times, and she would hide anything that showed that she was still married to her husband, Michael. She would hide him in closets under beds here talking like pictures of the two of them together, wedding announcements, whatever, anything to do with the marriage. When that kid went into the house, you would have thought they were divorced. She was hiding this from a fourteen year old kid. She even told this kid that she hated Michael because he was cheating on her with one of her friends, and that as soon as this kid graduated from high school, she was going to marry him and they were going to start their life together. There were videos police discovered where Christina was filming herself masturbating while looking at a picture of this kid, complete with moaning the kid's name as she orgasmed and y'all. That's important because it proves who that

31:41 video was intended for. Wasn't her husband's name, It was this kid's name. But she sends that video to the kid, and then she asked him to reciprocate and basically do the same thing, send the same thing back to her. Sick. Police said there were at least forty five sexual encounters at the school. Forty five. How do you even hide forty five instances of having sex with a student at your school? Does anybody have their eyes open at that school. That's crazy. They also said there were at least five sexual encounters that took place in her home, and police said in one instance, Michael came home unexpectedly while the student was on the way to her house. So when Michael left, she texted the student and told him, you know it's safe, you can come onto the house. Michael's gone, unbelievable.

32:43 The police interviewed a neighbor and he reported seeing the victim walking through Christina's backyard one day, essentially sneaking over to her house, and that neighbor's eyebrows were raised and speaking of neighbors, at one point, Christina even texted the victim and she said that she was scared because one of her neighbors got caught doing the same thing that she was doing, referring to sleeping with someone underage. And that's important, y'all because that proves that she knew it was wrong. She can't deny that now. Connon sense would tell you she knew it was wrong, but now she can't deny it. She's gott in him writing she was scared that she may get caught doing something illegal. Right.

33:24 There was even a text where the student was talking to Christina about them almost getting caught by another teacher when they had sex at the school one day. It really makes your mind blinded the fact that her husband is still with her. All I can say is he's naive or he's blinded by love. I don't know what it is, but he's still with her. As a matter of fact, there were some texts that the police uncovered where Christina said to the victim that her whole plan was to marry Michael. Now, remember a lot of this relationship was going on even before her and Michael got married. But her plan was to marry him, and when the student graduated, she was going to divorce Michael, get millions of dollars from that divorce, and then essentially the two of them could be together. And her husband knows that the stuff got uncovered, and he's still with her, at least as of her last hearing. That's the biggest mind blower to me of allved. She even discussed having kids with this student, and she said in one text that if the student was incapable of having kids, I guess if he's sterile or something, she would get a sperm done her because if she couldn't have kids with the victim.

34:38 She didn't want to have kids with anyone. And incidentally, you know, I cover a lot of these cases where the police always ask can you describe something about the teacher that only people that were having sex with her would know? The student in this case was able to do that. He confirmed that Christina had a tattoo, and this tattoo is apparently somewhere on her body you wouldn't see unless you were nude, and he confirmed it, said what it looked like, and he was right, So there's no denying it. Now. Another interesting thing is I told you at the beginning they had not had contact in fourteen months, and that's true. However, the police did discover that Christina actually attempted to contact the student. Just two days before her arrest. She had emailed the student and she asked about a fight that the student had got into at school via that email, and she also allegedly attached a map to her house in that email. She was obsessed with this kid. Now, the prominent Formla family, they have even come out with a statement and he quite honestly shock the shit out of me. Wait till I read you this quote. The public shaming of this woman accused of sexual misconduct reflects deeply embedded patterns of misogyny that have persisted across generations. Christina has become the

36:12 latest target of this troubling phenomenon, subjected to relentless personal attacks and the sexist scrutiny that ignore the legal process entirely. The statement then went on to say this isn't just a double standard, it's a spectacle, a public ritual that punishes a woman not for what they've done, but for how they're perceived. Instead of discussing the facts or law, public discourse fixates on Christina's appearance, her private life, even her lipstick, as if those details bear on guilt or innocence. That's not legal analysis. Its voyeurism, moral judgment, and cruelty excused by self serving performance of concern for an alleged victim.

36:57 And all I can say about that is is it's totally unreal and this family is in complete fucking denial because of all those texts. If a video of this chick masturbating and moaning the name of a fourteen year old or not enough for you, you look like an idiot. That's my opinion. It's just unreal. It seems that they're buying into whatever bullshit story she is telling them hook line and Sinker, even with the video evidence. Now, Christina Formella's next court hearing is scheduled for August fourth of twenty twenty five, and it's reported that that is also a status hearing, so it'll be interesting to see if her husband is still with her at this hearing. But judging by that statement the Formula family put out, it wouldn't surprise me if he was. So that's what we got for now on this one. It's really trending all over the internet. A lot of tiktoks on this one, as you could imagine, but I put all those details together and wanted to make sure that I brought it to you today. Thank you so much for listening. Please check out the Patreon page, commercial free early releases, bonus episodes, and we're back into our regular content that we drop every week, so it won't just all be about Diddy anymore, that is, until the sentencing. I will drop an episode or two covering the sentencing when that comes out late

38:30 next month. Patreon dot com slash exposed podcast files. You can go there and we do all kinds of extra things and it is really the main support for this show, so if you're enjoying it, please consider supporting it. Crime Our Weekly I've been putting previews on here. This is a podcast that I do with award winning true crime podcast or Kelly Jennings of Unspeakable, a true crime podcast by Kelly Jennings. We discover us trending headlines as they relate to true crime throughout the week and we drop that on Fridays. Go check it out. You need to go follow it on its own feed, so just search Crime Wire Weekly wherever you're listening or all. Put the link in the description of this podcast, make sure you follow it. I won't be dropping many more previews on here, so if you're enjoin that show, go check it out and follow it. And until next time for exposed scandalous files of the Elite, I'm your host, Jim Chapman. Much love,