Michelle Sulzicki: Married Teacher’s Aide Had Sex With 14-Year-Old 20 Times, Police Say — Baby May Be His
Michelle Sulzicki, a married, 28-year-old teacher’s aide in the Stratford, Connecticut, school system, has been arrested by police after a 14-year-old boy told a school social worker that he was concerned the new mom’s 5-month old baby was actually his. And while a single, seemingly wild claim by a teen boy might not normally be enough to get a teacher arrested, when investigators looked into the boy’s allegation, they found that there was a long and shocking story behind it.
The boy is reportedly a student at Bunnell High School in Stratford.
While the investigators are still not sure if the boy is, in fact, the father of Sulzicki’s baby girl, tests are underway to make that determination. However, they did learn from the boy — who turns 15 on Thursday, October 15 — that, according to the teen’s claims, the teacher’s aide first sexually assaulted him when she was acting as a volunteer tutor in his home and he was all of 12-years-old.
Over the next two years, the victim told Stratford detectives that Sulzicki coerced him into having sex about 20 times, sometimes using condoms that she would provide, but on other occasions, the sexual contact was unprotected.
The first time Sulzicki forced the boy into sexual intercourse, the two were in the then-12-year-old’s own home bedroom — with his parents also in the house. On that occasion, the boy told the police that he did not wear a condom, according to the Hartford Courant.
Sulzicki turned herself in to Stratford police on Wednesday. She denied to police that the victim is the father of her new baby. She also denied a sexual relationship with the victim, but under questioning did confess to one incident of sex with the boy when he was in sixth grade.
“Outraged and appalled are the only words that can describe these very disturbing allegations being made regarding the inappropriate conduct of a teacher with a student,” Stratford Schools Superintendent Janet Robinson said, quoted by WVIT-TV. “As soon as there was an indication of a possible crime, our immediate response was to remove that teacher from any further contact with any of our students.”
Robinson also said that as far as she had been told, there was “no impropriety” committed on school property.
Indeed, the boy also said that all of the incidents of sexual contact — including oral and anal sex as well as conventional sexual intercourse — took place at his home, according to the WVIT report.
Sulzicki admitted that she discussed with the boy “the way she preferred to [have] intercourse,” according a police affidavit, and that the teen shared with her his pornography-viewing habits.
The teacher’s aide appeared in State Superior Court Wednesday, where she faced charges of first-degree sexual assault, second-degree sexual assault, illegal sexual contact with a minor, and risk of injury to a minor.
The Sulzicki case is just the latest is a long series of incidents in which female teachers have been accused of sexual relationships with underage students, often long-term relationships.
In August, to cite one recent example, a 47-year-old Marshfield, Missouri, teacher, Johnna Feazell, entered a guilty plea to charges that she engaged in a long-term relationship with a 16-year-old girl — a “mother-daughter” style mentorship that turned sexual.
And in July, another Missouri teacher, Jessica Jones, was charged with statutory sodomy for engaging in a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old student that Jones had taken in as a foster daughter.
Michelle Sulzicki was released after posting 10 percent of her $100,000 bond after he lawyer argued that she was needed at home for such urgent duties as breastfeeding her new baby. She is due back in court on November 3.
[Featured Image: Stratford Police Department]
