The boy was sent to the center for troubled teens to get help.
Instead, he was taken advantage of by his English teacher at the Jefferson Hills Residential Treatment Center, a prosecutor told a Jefferson County district judge. The student and teacher carried on a sexual relationship for months.
On Thursday, the former teacher, 27-year-old Michelle Leigh Tolar of Denver, received four months in jail and 10 years of probation for the 2006 relationship.
She will be allowed to leave jail to work during the day and must register as a sex offender.
The boy’s stepmother told the judge the boy, now 17, was sent to the facility because he suffered from a mental illness.
“Then this happened, and he became worse,” she told Judge Stephen Munsinger. “He tried to commit suicide.”
She then asked the judge to impose the strictest sentence possible.
The Denver Post is not identifying either the stepmother or the victim.
Tolar’s attorney, Charles Morphew, painted a much different picture of the relationship.
He said Tolar and the boy exchanged books, read poetry and talked about life. They planned to stay together after the boy came of age and got out of the facility, Morphew said.
“This was a relational situation,” Morphew told the judge, arguing that the boy was not victimized and Tolar had little likelihood of repeating the crime.
However, he said, “You’re not going to hear us make any argument that this was in any way acceptable.”
Tolar pleaded guilty in March to charges of sexually assaulting the teen and contributing to his delinquency.
Morphew told the judge Tolar was no longer working as a teacher, had been in counseling since January and is enrolled in a master’s degree program. He said jail was not necessary because “her life is ruined because of this action.”
Tolar herself got the last word before her sentencing.
She told the judge she made choices she was not proud of. She also denied the prosecutor’s claim that she was in love with the boy.
She said, however, she cared about the victim and wanted to go on record as apologizing to him, even though the boy wasn’t in court.
“I hope that he is able to overcome any hurt or pain that I caused him,” she said.
Tolar was the second teacher in a week to be sentenced for sexual contact with a teenage student in Colorado. Last Friday in Fort Collins, Carrie McCandless, a former Brighton Charter School teacher, was given 45 days in jail and ordered to register as a sex offender.
Staff writer Nick Martin can be reached at 303-954-1698 or nmartin@denverpost.com.
