Andrea Michelle Cardosa, a California educator and former school administrator, was charged Monday with 16 felony counts of child sex abuse after one of her victims, Jamie Carrillo, posted a YouTube video in which she calls her alleged abuser and confronts her for what she did several years ago. Cardosa, 40, was charged with five counts of aggravated sexual assault on a child and 11 counts of lewd acts on a child, the Riverside County District Attorney's office said.
Jamie Carrillo, now 28, posted the emotional video on Jan 17, showing her making a call to Alhambra High School, where receptionists connected her to a woman who identifies herself as Cardosa. "You should be so ashamed and so disgusted with yourself," Jamie says. "I am. I am," the woman says. "I regret it every day. Every day." Jamie does not give specifics of the alleged abuse in the video but said the abuse took place "off and on" for her between the ages of 12 and 18. She said she didn't come forward as a teenager because the teacher had brainwashed her.
"She told me that my family didn't love me. She told me that nobody cared about me and that she was the only one that loved me and the only one that was there for me," she said. "She made me believe that she was my only friend, and that I could trust her," said Carrillo. Days after the video was posted online, another woman came forward accusing Cardosa of abusing her in 2009-2010. Her attorney asked that his 18-year-old client only be identified as “Brianna.”
Cardosa resigned January 17 from her job as an administrator at Alhambra High School in Southern California after the first accusation was uploaded on YouTube, according to the school district. She was arrested by deputies in the city of Perris soon after the charges were filed, and is expected to be arraigned Thursday, district attorney's spokesman John Hall said. Officials said that Riverside police detectives began their investigation into the allegations against Cardosa after Jamie Carrillo posted the video online.
Carrillo decided to expose her former abuser because she believed that a statute of limitations, with the abuse allegedly taking place more than a decade ago, would prevent Cardosa from being criminally charged. However, according to the district’s Senior Public Information Specialist, John Hall, because the five counts of aggravated sexual assault on a child carry potential life sentences, a statute of limitations does not apply. Adding to that, the allegations by the second victim would have been within the legal time frame.
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