Former Christian school teacher will serve no jail time for sexual relationship with female student
Tara Drooker, a former teacher at Richmond Christian School in Chesterfield, Virginia, who was convicted of having a sexual relationship with a female student, will serve no jail time due to a plea agreement that suspended four consecutive 12-month terms for her crime.
In 2017, when she was 25, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Drooker, while working as a teacher and volleyball coach at the Christian school, began a sexual relationship with the 16-year-old student. The relationship continued after the student became an adult. She pleaded guilty to sexually abusing the student on Wednesday.
Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Mary-Kate Collins said the former student, who is now 21, reported the relationship to police in August 2021. She said the relationship with Drooker, who was her history teacher and soccer coach, started on March 2017 and ended in November 2020.
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The contact began with kissing and then progressed sexually on at least three occasions in Drooker’s apartment in Chesterfield, Collins said.
Drooker was originally charged with four counts of taking indecent liberties with a child by a custodian, according to NBC12, but she pleaded guilty to one count of misdemeanor sexual battery and three misdemeanor counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor by engaging in consensual sex as part of her plea deal.
Drooker’s arrest for the illegal relationship came just days after Elisabeth R. Bredemeier, 21, another volleyball coach, was arrested for sexually assaulting a 17-year-old girl while in a custodial relationship at the same school.
Police also charged the Christian school’s headmaster, Cliff Williams, and business manager, Derek Zbyszinski, with failing to report the sexual relationship between Bredemeier and the student to authorities. The headmaster was convicted in February and sentenced to a 10-day suspended jail term along with a $500 fine. Prosecutors dropped charges against Zbyszinski.
Chesterfield Circuit Judge Lynn Brice called the offenses by Drooker, who is now 30, “very aggravated.”
In deciding on the sentence, she weighed a psychosexual evaluation of the former Christian school teacher by Dr. Evan Nelson, a clinical psychologist.
Nelson said Drooker “has no acute or enduring pathology” and is at low risk of re-offending. Statements from both the prosecution and defense also noted Nelson’s opinion that “there were strong reasons to believe” that Drooker’s sexual relationship with the student was an anomaly and “was not anything related at all to grooming,” defense attorney Greg Sheldon said.
“What is extremely important to the court is that [Drooker] has never blamed the victim at all, and there has been no attempt to minimize or excuse her behavior,” Judge Brice noted. “And instead, [Drooker] notes that she was the adult, and the onus had been on her to set the limits. Also important to the court is that the victim supports the plea agreement.”
Collins agreed that Drooker “has taken full responsibility from the very beginning” and is psychologically a good candidate for treatment and supervision.
It was also noted that Drooker’s former student did not want her to be convicted of a felony or serve time behind bars, but she wanted her to have consequences for what she did.
In addition to the suspended sentence, Drooker will have to register as a state sex offender for a minimum of 15 years, which will prevent her from working with children. She can then petition the court to remove her name from the sex offender registry after that.
