Teacher charged with sexually abusing student more than 20 years ago

A west suburban middle school teacher is facing a felony sex charge in connection with an allegation that she abused a female student more than two decades ago.

Dawn Chester, 54, has been placed on administrative leave at Northlake Middle School where she was most recently working, officials said.

Chester was teaching in Westchester under a different name, Dawn Lach, when she sexually abused a student at the middle school there in 2000, Westchester police said in a statement.

The student, who was in the 7th grade at the time, is now 37.

In June, she reported her accusations to the Westchester Police Department after she discovered on social media that Chester is a middle-school teacher in Northlake, authorities said. She also coached the boy's volleyball team in the spring, according to the school's website.

Chester had been a science teacher and volleyball coach at Westchester Middle School. She and the girl exchanged letters in which Chester complimented her eyes and smile and Chester said she couldn’t go a day without looking at the girl, a Cook County prosecutor said at her detention hearing Tuesday at the Maywood courthouse.

Chester was freed on the condition that she not have contact with the alleged victim or anyone under the age of 18.

On a school trip to a Maryland camp in 1998, Chester hugged the sixth-grader as the girl lay on the ground gazing at the stars at night, the prosecutor said.

At Westchester Middle School, Chester would put the girl in detention just to see her alone, according to the prosecutor. Chester is accused of sexually assaulting the girl when she was in 7th grade during a sleep-over in the Westchester Village Hall, where they allegedly shared the same air mattress and the girl was in her pajamas.

A former Westchester school superintendent recalled being told by students and some parents that the girl had slept on the mattress with Chester as the rest of the students slept on the floor, the Cook County prosecutor said during Chester's detention hearing.

The letters between the two continued until May 2000 when the girl’s mother discovered them and notified school officials. The Westchester school system’s legal team advised Chester to resign from her teaching job there because her letters to the girl “appeared to be ‘grooming’ in nature,” the prosecutor said.

Chester couldn’t be reached for comment.