Sunday, November 8, 2009 East Central Illinois

Former Urbana teacher White sentenced to 48 years

By: Mary Schenk

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Friday, April 04, 2008

URBANA – A former Urbana grade school teacher was sentenced this afternoon to 48 years in prison for molesting female students.

Champaign County Judge Harry Clem sentenced Jon White, 27, of Villa Grove for aggravated criminal sexual abuse involving acts that occurred between August 2005 and December 2007 with 7- and 8-year-old girls who were students at Thomas Paine School in Urbana.

White pleaded guilty in February to eight counts that accused him of deriving sexual gratification from having the blindfolded girls put an object in their mouths as he watched.

White faced up to 56 years in prison on the Champaign County conviction. His sentencing in McLean County on two counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse is set for April 28.

On Thursday, prosecutors laid out more of the evidence they amassed against White in the investigation, led by Urbana police.

John Pye, superintendent of human resources for McLean County Unit 5, testified that White was suspended with pay for five days in the fall of 2004 after he admitted viewing adult pornography on a computer in his first-grade classroom at Colene Hoose Elementary School in Normal. District officials learned he was looking at it during the school day, Pye said.

Pye said in April 2005, a mother told White's principal that White had shown pictures of a young actress to her daughter, a fifth-grader, and told the girl she looked like the actress. Pye called the pictures "seductive" and said he didn't feel they were appropriate to show a fifth-grader. That incident, in combination with the computer pornography, led to White's termination.

"We believed it was showing a pattern of behavior that was inappropriate for our schools," said Pye,

Questioned by White's attorney, Carol Dison, about the reference letter that his principal at Colene Hoose wrote for him after he was fired, Pye said: "The information contained in there was factual."

In testimony designed to mitigate White's sentence, White's parents described their son as fun-loving, outgoing, caring and an easy child to raise. Joyce White said her third child was a good brother to his older, mentally and physically disabled sister. He was also a good athlete.

She and her husband Robert both said White is a great father to his daughter, who will be 2 in May.

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