Bad Teachers: New Jersey

0:20 Hey everyone, and welcome back to Exposed Scandalous Files of the Elite. I'm your host, Jim Chapman, and today we are back with a new episode in our Bad Teachers State specific series. And as I like to do, we are going to jump right into it. And it starts really. In nineteen eighty nine for. Our first subject, when Julie Rizzitello was born in the state of New Jersey, in the Jersey Shore area of the state. Of course, everyone's familiar with the Jersey Shore. Now, in her mid twenties, Julie chose education as herr profession of choice, and in September of twenty fourteen, she was hired by the Wall Township Public School System as an English teacher, which this particular school, Wall Township High This was.

1:14 A school that was known to educate. Let's say, the more privileged kids in the area of the Jersey Shore, and she would teach ninth grade English and she also helped with act prep work. Now, colleagues would describe Julie Ristello as a phenomenal teacher right away. They would really take to her. She had kind of a unique personality that was a little magnetic, and they would also say she offered a pretty stable teaching environment. Now, over the next decade, she would build trust among her peers and her boss, and she would eventually become one of the top.

1:55 Paid teachers at that school. Then, in twenty seventeen, she gets married to her husband and the couple settles in brick Township, which is an ocean community about fifteen minutes from where she worked. Easy commute for her, and Julie and her husband would then go on to have two children. Family also a pretty significant part of Julie's life. Her relatives owned a very popular bagel shop on the Jersey Shore, and Julie allegedly would serve ace kind of a recruiter of employees due to her access to young high school aged students her being a teacher. She'd say, Hey, you want to make some extra money in the bagel shop, We're hiring. So at this point, everything on the surface seemed perfect for Julie Rizzitello. She was thirty five years old, she was a mother of two. She had spent more than.

2:52 A decade teaching and kind of honing young minds, and by the summer of twenty twenty four, Julie suddenly walks into the administration building and she hands in her resignation. But what happened to this teacher that appeared to have it all by this point in life. Well, it started in April of that year, quietly, almost innocently at first, a former student, fresh out of her English class from a couple of years back. He starts texting her, and the messages were casual at first, just checking in, seeing what's going on in your life. Now, that's totally inappropriate, right for a teacher and a student, But it was the sort of text a young person would send if they were testing the waters, sort of speak, seeing if this teacher would say, Hey, I'm your teacher, or I was your teacher, your former teacher, and we shouldn't be texting each other back and forth about what's up in our life.

3:54 Right. Well, she should have cut this off full stop right there at the beginning, right, But she didn't. Julie wanted the attention, and it became a. Craving for her. Now by May of twenty twenty four, a month later, those texts turned really explicit. Nude photos were sent back and forth between this teacher and student. Then the encounter started mostly in the afternoon in her home while her kids were at daycare, or they would have quick meetings in the high school parking lot at night, even in the bagel shop. A few times after the bagel shop would close. She would tell herself it was different. This time, he had just turned eighteen.

4:44 It was legal. Things would continue throughout the end of that school year, but in early July, middle of a summer break, an anonymous tip would land on the principal's desk of that school and everything would change. An unnamed fellow teacher would notice the way this kid hung out with this teacher even in the summertime, and as a mandated reporter, this person reported it. An investigation was started immediately, and by the time the headlines hit the Facebook groups, Julie had already had that resignation letter typed up. It was short, it was to the point, it was signed and dated, and she simply strolled into that building, handed it in and walked out of that school that was her second home since she was twenty five years old. Now at this point in her life, she was thirty six. Shortly after turning in that resignation, a team of unmarked police cars shows up at her home and they arrest her.

5:52 Now at the station, they read her the charges, two counts of second degree sexual assault, accounts of criminal sexual contact in one count witness tampering. Now, apparently she had told this young man to delete everything from his iPhone when she discovered she was being investigated. Bell is set, which she makes that bell with conditions such as an ankle bracelet. And she can't go around kids other than her own kids. And I'm going to review both the affidavit of probable cause and the arrest warn't with you quickly so that you can get some context. And I'm going to read the probable cause affidavit first. It says, on July one of twenty twenty four, the director of Human Resources at the Wall Township Public Schools contacted Detective Bureau of that area to report possible inappropriate sexual relationship between a former student and Wall Township High School teacher.

6:55 And the reason it said former student was a student had graduated by this point. The teacher, Julie A. Risitello, was reported to be having a sexual relationship with an eighteen year old victim while he was a student at the school. Formal statements were taken from the victim, during which he detailed a romantic relationship he was having with Risitello starting in April of twenty twenty four. May eighteenth of twenty twenty four, the victim reported he had oral sex and sexual intercourse with Risitello in his vehicle in Brick, New Jersey. Victim reported that he and Rositello continued to have sexual intercourse sexual contacts on multiple occasions between April twenty twenty four and June of twenty twenty four. The sexual conduct occurred in Wall Township, Belmar, and Brick, which are counties. He also reported that Rositello sent him new photographs of herself following the first time they had sexual intercourse.

7:55 Victim provided consent to search his cell phone, which revealed numerous communications and photographs between Risitello and victim that were sexual in nature. He also reported that he disclosed his relationship with Rositello to several of his friend Additional formal statements were obtained with several witnesses who also detailed their knowledge of Rositello's relationship with victim and coroborated Victim's disclosure. So that's the probable cause affidavit, and then they serve the warrant, and the warrant says, within the jurisdiction of this court, Julie Rositello commit sexual assault by committing an act of sexual penetration upon victim, a pupil who at the time was at least eighteen but less than twenty two years old, while a teaching staff member and had supervisory or disciplinary power over victims, specifically having oral and vaginal intercourse with victim between May eighteenth of twenty twenty four and June fourteenth of twenty twenty four.

8:54 And then it states the criminal Code that that violated. So two weeks later, on July sixteenth, in seventeenth of twenty twenty four, she has a hearing and prosecutors drop an absolute bombshell. Another victim had surfaced, this one from years earlier, a boy who had been seventeen back in twenty seventeen, and he was, it says, a freshman English student. I don't know how you're seventeen and still a freshman, That's what it says. So that's what I'm gonna go with. And she asked him to come help her in her classroom over the lunch hour. Now, in that classroom, she would have sex with him that day and multiple other times from December of twenty seventeen to nearly February of twenty eighteen in places like her home when her husband was at work and the kids were a daycare, as well as school in her classroom. And keep in mind, this affair with this particular student took place seven years prior to her affair that she was originally arrested for with the eighteen year old. Now, this new discovery leads to an additional count of second degree sexual assault as well as an additional count of witness tampering.

10:15 Like you see in almost all of. These cases, the weeks turn into moss, the moss turn into years, which no exception here. The hearings would come and go until August twenty ninth of twenty twenty five, if you can believe that took that long, And Julie would cop a plea like they all do, and she would plead to two counts of second degree sex assault, one for each student. Now at this point she's thirty seven years old. So after you plead, you go back to court for your sentencing, and the victims they also get to speak and provide a victim impact statement sometimes they actually talk in court. Sometimes they turn the statement in and someone else reads it.

11:01 Just depends. In this case, the victims did speak in court, and the whole point of this is the judge considers us before he makes his ruling. And this is where. In my view, the biggest bombshell of all is going to surface, when on February eleventh of twenty twenty six, just a couple of weeks from the date in which I'm recording this right now, that sentencing hearing would occur, and that victim from way back in twenty seventeen would speak, and he would drop the biggest bombshell of all when he would reveal that during an encounter on his birthday in twenty eighteen, he didn't have a condom, apparently, and Julie wanted to have sex with this kid, this freshman, even though he's seventeen at this time. She apparently assured him she could not get pregnant. Don't worry about it if you don't have a condom, no big deal. However, eight weeks later, in her home, with him in the room, she takes a home pregnancy test, and she discovers that she was indeed pregnant.

12:14 With this kid's child. She would then terminate the pregnancy, despite him begging her not to, and right there in open court, he would describe how hurt he was and how heartbroken he was, and that this had a major effect on his life after that, and after he told his story, that would have a profound effect on the judge, whose voice would actually crack when he recalled it during the sentencing. So last month, Julie Ristello was sentenced to ten years in prison for each of the two counts. Now, the sentence is set to run concurrent. That means it's ten years total because you serve both at the same time, but much more fitting than what you are used to hearing on this show typically. And I believe that that victim impact statement made all the difference in the severity of the.

13:18 Sentence that she got. And it's really such a shame y'all, because Julie had everything. She was stunningly beautiful, a tall, blue eyed blonde. She had two beautiful kids, she was married to a man that loved her, and she lost it all for at least ten years. Now as far as her marriage, something that may surprise you is, at least as of this recording. Her and her husband are still married. He did not divorce her over this, which is pretty crazy to me. But there you have it. Now, let's go to our second bad teacher that I'm going to cover today, and that's the story of language arts teacher at Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey. And her name is Nicole Dufault. And Nicole was born in nineteen seventy nine in Bloomfield, New Jersey. Now, by the time she graduates from high school in nineteen ninety seven, she already knew that she wanted to be a teacher. She graduates from college and by her early twenties she had already earned her teaching credentials, and in two thousand and four, after kind of trying it out in different schools, she settles in completely in her chosen profession by accepting a language arts teaching position at Columbia High School. This is in Maplewood, New Jersey. Now while there her life really starts to blossom.

14:50 She gets married in two thousand and nine. In twenty ten, she has her first child, a son, and in twenty eleven she has another son. And now, by all accounts, she was a fantastic mother to her children. However, beneath the surface, as it seems like it always is, trouble was brewing. By July fifteenth of twenty thirteen, she actually files for divorce from her husband, which, y'all, this dude is no prize in his own right, and we'll get to that. But it may be the fastest divorce in the history of New Jersey because from the filing on July of twenty thirteen to the time it was final in October of twenty thirteen, there was only a three month time frame between the time it's filed to the time it was final That's the quickest divorce I've ever heard, especially considering this couple had two kids.

15:51 It's just mind blown to me how fast it was. So just prior to that divorce being finalized, she had started another year teaching at Columbia High School her tenth year. Unbeknownst to her, a video had started circulating among the student body, and this video depicted Nicole performing oral sex on a student in a car, and it was being filmed on a cell phone by another student who was also inside of that car. Now, this video, of. Course makes it into the hands of officials at the school after every kid in the school was seen it, and they actually report this to police as they should do as mandated reporters, and an investigation would start and what would follow and what police would learn, I got to say, is one of the most shocking cases I've covered yet on bad teachers. So the investigation would paint an absolutely disturbing picture. Encounters on school property, including her classroom with multiple male students between the ages of fourteen and fifteen. Encounters in her car including oral and vaginal sex, and even sex while driving. Now, initially the charges brought against her would be centered around three boys, but eventually this would lead to allegations in charges involving six boys. So,

17:26 armed with a ton of evidence, including that infamous video, text, messages, etc. On November third of twenty fourteen, police arrive at Nicole due faults resident. They have a search warrant and they seize computers, they seize her phone, and they also place her under arrest on twenty three counts of first degree sexual assault seventeen counts of second degree child indagament. So, long story short, she goes to jail. Now she gets a huge bond, five hundred thousand dollars and a half a million dollar bond. But surprisingly, somehow she makes that bond and she is allowed to go home with conditions like wearing an ankle bracelet, things like that, stay away from other people's kids, the typical stuff. But a few months later, in February of twenty fifteen, she is indicted, and it's even worse than the original charges that she was arrested for because the investigation started yielding results.

18:34 Now her indictment is for forty counts, forty counts of sexual assault involving six victims. She's played not guilty. We believe in her innocence, and we believe, as I've asserted before, that my client is the victim of a certain form of sexual assault, and we stand by that. You're saying a victim of a certain kind of sexual assault, Are you saying she was assaulted? Well, that's what I said. Then if it couldn't get any worse. A few months later, her piece of shit ex husband, he gets caught up in some trouble of his own when he is arrested for burglarizing. A home and stealing eight.

19:15 Hundred dollars worth of jewelry. In addition, to that. He also gets arrested for some drug charges, so trouble comes his way as well, and that whole family is a mess. You gotta feel horrible for those young babies that they had. Obviously they weren't thinking about them kids. So here's where it gets even wilder. On July twenty second of twenty fifteen, about six months after her arrest, her lawyer comes out and he makes some claims in an attempt to explain. Away her behavior, if you will. And he claims that Nicole suffered from what is known as frontal lobe syndrome. I looked that up in Frontal lobe syndrome is a brain injury that he said stem from complications from her first pregnancy. He stated that this syndrome made it impossible for her to resist the.

20:11 Advances of those students. Now, I will say that she did have some serious complications in her first pregnancy. She actually had to have some sort of shunt that was actually placed into. Her brain to drain excess fluid. Now the question is did it affect her decision making to the point that she would sleep with six students and had absolutely no control over whether she did that or not To me. That seems kind of hard to believe, but I acknowledge. I'm not a doctor. I don't know. I can't really. Say if it did or didn't have an effect. Now, what is undeniable at this point is that this teacher had sex over forty times with six different students. So eventually more details so surface and Nicole. She was thirty five years old when all these incidents were going down, and it's important to say, I want to mention this.

21:08 She was a white teacher, and details that would come out included the fact that she would tell her victims. Now keep in mind they're all fourteen, fifteen years old, and they're all black victims. She would tell them that she liked BBC, which is slang for big black cock. Which bring this up because if you have this brain injury and you are playing the victim, you're the victim, right. You can't tell these kids now and you can't be held responsible for this because you have frontal lobe syndrome. Well, if you have no ability to refuse sex to a fourteen or fifteen year old kid, then what the heck doesn't matter what the race is. But she, according to documents that I read, had told several black kids that she only up with black kids. So I don't know, it doesn't make sense to me if you can't resist kids, what difference does it make what race they are.

22:11 But we'll move on. So the time on this one again drags through the legal system, like all of them do, just move. Way too slow. In New Jersey, not impressed by the prosecution of these cases and a timely fashioned. But it's not until June of twenty twenty that she pleads, and she cuts a deal where she only pleads guilty to three counts of third degree sexual assault forty times. Now she's done this three times, she pleads to and I am assuming due to COVID that it takes probably, well not probably. It definitely took another fourteen months before she sentenced. That was in March of twenty twenty one, and she gets, in my opinion, an appalling sentence three years in jail suspended, no jail time. That to me is absolutely unbelievable and really disappointing to discover there that, I mean, she got no she paid no consequence.

23:12 Y'all, 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. So lastly, we're going to go to Montclair, New Jersey, and I'm going to tell you the story of bad teacher Erica de Pilo. Now, Erica grew up in a very supportive environment and that would shape her path toward education. She was born in nineteen seventy nine. She pursued her passion for literature in teaching early on, and she would earn her Teaching Certificate of Eligibility in two thousand and two, and that would follow by a full Teacher of English certificate in two thousand and four, and then she would even go beyond that and get what's none as a supervisor certificate in two thousand and eight, so she is a very sharp teacher.

24:41 Now by her early thirties, Erica de Polo had established herself as a very dedicated educator as well. She was at what's none as West Orange High School. At West Orange, she taught English honor classes and she also coached the JV ten team. She was very charismatic. She had a commitment to teaching, and that. Would earn her the twenty eleven Essex County Teacher of the Year Award. She was described as a model professional, very engaging, accomplished, and seemingly above reproach. Yet beneath this polished exterior that she had and she was a strikingly beautiful teacher. Apollo grappled with personal demons that had roots that went way back to her college years. According to her, she said she suffered from depression and anxiety, and there was some proof of that conditions would persist into adulthood and that would lead to a diagnosis of bipolar disorder several years before the events that I'm going to tell you about occurred. Now, obviously the treatment involved medications, but as later revelation would show, she had been prescribed any depressants rather than mood stabilizers, and that mismatch. Her defense later on would use to paint a picture that the

26:14 medication is what was causing her to do these things. They made her very impulsive, she said, and they would cloud her judgment. Again, I'm not a doctor. I can't speak to that. I'm just giving you the facts now. During the summer of twenty twelve, that was a turning point in her life when around June fifteenth of that year, da Pallo allegedly began a sexual relationship with a fifteen year old male student from her Honors English class. Now authorities police they would claim these encounters involved multiple instances of sexual intercourse and that they would continue several months.

26:56 Now how this relationship came to life eight is undisclosed. I can't find it anywhere. But by early September, the Essex County Prosecutor Office they gathered enough evidence to act and arrest to Pillo, and she was arrested on September first of twenty twelve, and she was charged with first degree aggravated sexual assault, second degree sexual assault, and endangering the welfare of a child serious felony. Y'all, and they carried a. Potential of up to ten years in prison if convicted, especially if that first degree aggravated sexual assault. Bail gets set and she gets a significant bail one hundred thousand dollars.

27:42 She does make that bail, she's released on bond, and the West Orange County School District they responded quickly suspending her indefinitely. Now, on September twelfth of twenty twelve, the Palo has. Her first appearance. This is in Superior Court. In Newark and her attorney he enters a not guilty plea on her behalf. This is totally expected. You got nothing to lose. She had a bunch of family members there and they were very you know, they're showing their support of her. I'm sure at the time they believed she was not guilty. Now, the prosecutor at this hearing, he said what you would expect him to say. She abused her position of authority over a minor and fifteen year old here, not eighteen year old like that first case.

28:34 Keep that in mind. So by February of twenty thirteen, the weight of the evidence that was against d Palo in the prospect of a lengthy trial, it leads to what she got to plea, and on February twenty eighth of twenty thirteen, Da Palo changes her plea from not guilty to guilty and she gets only one single account of endangering the welfare of a child. In return, she admitted to the sexual relationship in open court and that deal obviously reduced the charges significantly. Now also, as. A part of that deal, it required her to undergo a psychological evaluation, and she did have some lifetime consequences she would have to face, such as registering as a sex offender. So on April twenty ninth, a tearful Depallo addressed the court and she says, quote, I feel nothing but remorse for my actions. I apologize to those who were directly or indirectly affected as a result of my conduct.

29:42 And her attorney he elaborated the fact that she had bipolar disorder and the medications, the mixing of these antidepressants may have caused her to make these irrational decisions and would cause her to have what he quote what he was quoted as saying was manic behavior. He said the drugs made her think she could do anything. She was functioning in the classroom, but no one knew, and so that was something that the judge had to take into consideration, which he did. It appears on his sentence because she was also sentenced to three years in prison, and she also got the whole freaking sentence suspended, basically probation, no.

30:25 Jail time at all. Two out of three today. How you like that? So there you have it. That is the bad teachers from New Jersey that I chose to expose this week. Don't forget to join me. Next week I'll be exposing other bad teachers from a completely different state. I haven't picked that state yet. I'll pick it in the next couple of days and I'll start my research and come up with two or three or four teachers. They're gonna have some unbelievable cases you will not believe. Thank you so much for listen. I check out the Patreon where I drop a commercial free early release of this episode you just heard, plus many other things. I'm talking files pictures of every case I discuss here on Exposed. But before I get out of here today, I have a bad teachers consequence scale where I rate these states on how stuff the consequences are for these teachers in New Jersey you get a D, a D. Two out of three teachers doing everything I just told you today, and only one of them does prison time. Do better, New Jersey And until next time for exposed scandalous files of the elite, I'm your host, Jim Chapman. Much love,