WHEATON, Ill. — Alleged dirty teacher Christina Formella and her husband were all smiles in court as she tried to convince a judge to let her move closer to the ex-student whom she is accused sexually abusing more than 50 times.
Formella, 30, swished into a DuPage County courtroom holding hands with hubby Michael on Wednesday morning. Neither of the Formellas answered questions about the case that has shocked suburban Chicago.
“Michael was holding her hand the entire time. They were smiling at each other, literally smiling at each other the entire time until she got up,” one courtroom spy who sat directly behind the couple told The Post. “They look really confident.”
Christina revealed she has been living with her parents at their $560,000 home on a golf course since mid-June when her charges were upgraded and she was given an ankle monitor.
She slyly concealed the court-ordered tracker with a pair of wide-leg pants.
The Formellas’ marital home is within a court-ordered 5,000-foot buffer zone between her and the alleged victim, her lawyers told the judge.
She asked Wednesday that the buffer zone be reduced to 2,500 feet, explaining that the boy often hangs out with friends near her home and even has a job in the area. The judge denied the motion.
Formella was hit with 52 additional charges last month for aggravated criminal sexual abuse and criminal sexual assault. The former Downers Grove special education teacher and soccer coach was arrested in March and is accused of abusing her teenage student at least 50 times — including at least 45 times at the school.
She and her husband are college sweethearts and married just last year — just weeks before Formella’s alleged relationship with the boy came to an end in September.
Prosecutors say Formella told the boy that she was planning to leave her husband and take him for millions.
Michael Formella is the scion of E. Formella & Sons, a Chicago-based Italian foods manufacturer and purveyor.
And despite Christina’s alleged plot to rip off the family and run away with a teenybopper, her father-in-law, Randy Formella, has even joined the accused creep in court. He has also declined to comment on why the family was sticking by her.
Michael Formella, who was a baseball star at the couple’s alma mater, Concordia University of Chicago, previously told cops he was blindsided by the charges and had no idea his wife was allegedly stepping out on him with an underage boy.
But investigators say the inappropriate affair was happening right under his nose — with Christina allegedly even texting the alleged victim while she and her husband were vacationing in Italy.
Christina is also accused of grooming the boy, with prosecutors saying her advances began when he was just 14 years old.
He had been on her soccer team at the time, but after an injury took him off the field, she started giving him private tutoring before school.
It was in her classroom during those sessions where their alleged affair began, with the first alleged sexual contact happening when she was 28 and he was 15.
The allegations came to light in March after the boy’s mother found text messages on his phone in which Formella professed her love for the boy and talked openly about enjoying their sex — including one message where she said, “I love having sex with you.”
Prosecutors initially alleged there was just one sexual incident after a romance built up for months, but said they later came across evidence that indicated dozens of sexual encounters.
The pair allegedly had sex dozens of times in her classroom, but also several times at her and her husband’s home — on school time.
Every morning, the NY POSTcast offers a deep dive into the headlines with the Post’s signature mix of politics, business, pop culture, true crime and everything in between. Subscribe here!
After her arrest, Formella told cops she was being targeted and blackmailed by the boy because she was nice and “good looking.”
But text messages between the pair — and a torrid diary found on her phone — suggested a much different dynamic, according to prosecutors, who characterized Formella as obsessive and controlling.
“I went back and screen shotted every, single, time that I said we should break up until after the wedding and after you graduated,” Formella allegedly wrote in the diary.
“And every single fking time you came back and convinced me it would be fine. YOU ruined us. I warned you that we should never have started dating a long long long fking time ago and you gas lit me and convinced me it was fine,” she allegedly said of the teen boy.
“We WILL be in each other’s lives forever. We will be able to love each other while also living our own lives,” the diary added.
Formella claimed those writings were merely a form of self-therapy, and that any sexual references in them had to do with her husband.
Leave a Reply