Educator pleads guilty to sex assault in YouTube case
RIVERSIDE, Calif. >> A California educator who was confronted with allegations of abuse in a phone call by a former student who then posted the conversation on YouTube has pleaded guilty to sexual-assault charges involving two victims.
Andrea Cardosa, a former assistant principal, entered pleas Friday to three counts of lewd acts with a child under 14, the Riverside Press-Enterprise reports.
The charges carry a maximum sentence of 10 years, eight months in prison. Sentencing was scheduled for Feb. 9.
Cardosa was charged last February with 16 felony counts, including five counts of aggravated assault on a child.
Cardosa abused one former student, who is now 28, from 1997 to 2001, starting when the child was 12 and attending Chemawa Middle School in Riverside, prosecutors said.
In a video posted online on Jan. 17, 2013, the former student telephones Alhambra High School, where Cardosa was working, and receptionists connect her to a woman who identifies herself as Cardosa.
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“You should be so ashamed and so disgusted with yourself,” the caller says.
“I am. I am,” the woman says. “I regret it every day. Every day.”
The former student does not detail the alleged abuse in the video.
In court papers, prosecutors said Cardosa molested the girl over 100 times, and acts were committed in a locker room and Cardosa’s car, and at the home of Cardosa’s sister, where the two were almost discovered.
Another former student came forward after seeing the video. Cardosa was charged with abusing that victim from 2009 to 2010 while she was a student at Tomas Rivera Middle School in Perris.
Shortly before she was arrested, Cardosa resigned from her position as an administrator at Alhambra High School.