Janitor Who Videotaped Students Gets Maximum Term

JOLIET, IL - A young man from Joliet who worked as the school janitor at Chaney Monge School in Crest Hill found out Tuesday afternoon that he will spend the rest of his twenties behind the prison walls of the Illinois Department of Corrections. Will County Judge David Carlson imposed a five-year prison term for Ryan Thompson, now 28. Earlier this year, Thompson pleaded guilty to two counts of unauthorized videotaping of several girls who were disrobing for gym class in their school locker room.

The crime was discovered in March 2017 after Thompson's wife went to the Crest Hill Police after finding disturbing videos on her husband's phone.

Last week in court, a Crest Hill Police detective testified that one of the videos showed Thompson hiding inside an attic at the school masturbating into a sex toy.

State's Attorney James Glasgow was pleased that Judge Carlson issued the maximum penalty. The defendant faced a sentence ranging from probation up to two to five years of prison for secretly videotaping six adolescent girls at Chaney Monge.

Thompson hid behind the closed door of a utility room and used a cellular telephone to secretly record the female victims between February and March of 2017. The video recordings did not capture the girls while they were unclothed, the state's attorney's office noted.

Glasgow praised prosecutor Elizabeth Domagalla for securing the guilty plea and a sentence that takes Thompson off the streets.

“Assistant State’s Attorney Domagalla resourcefully utilized an extremely damning psycho-sexual evaluation to argue that a prison sentence was absolutely necessary in this case, even though the defendant had no criminal record,” Glasgow said. “Judge Carlson heard her arguments and handed down the maximum sentence, noting that anything less would have deprecated the serious nature of this crime.”

During Tuesday's sentencing, Judge Carlson remarked how Illinois lawmakers had essentially tied the court's hands and made it extremely difficult for Carlson to even impose a prison term against Thompson even though the crime involved secretly videotaping underage girls inside a public school by a school employee.

The criminal offense of unauthorized videotaping is not deemed by the state of Illinois to be a sexual crime, Carlson informed the gallery of spectators. As a result, once Thompson finishes his prison term, he will not be listed or bound register as a sexual offender, the judge pointed out.

"It's absolutely insane ... unless people really, really look for it, they won't know what you did," Carlson told the defendant.

The judge also explained that the pre-sentencing evaluation determined Thompson was attracted to white teenage females between ages of 14 and 17 and he was deemed a higher risk to re-offend.

"This wasn't an accident," Judge Carlson told the defendant. "This wasn't a mistake. This isn't a one-time only thing. I don't believe that for a second."

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Before imposing the sentence, Judge Carlson told Thompson "it is a violation of trust that I can't put into words, and you're a father."

The alternative to incarceration, the judge noted, only allowed the judge to impose a maximum term of probation of 30 months.

However, the five-year prison term for Thompson, technically, does not mean the former Chaney Monge janitor will remain in prison until May 2023.

Based on the offense, Thompson will get one day of good-time credit for every day of imprisonment, the judge noted. On top of that, Thompson may be eligible for another 180 days of credit as well.

"It's absolutely insane," Carlson reflected. "Even at maximum sentence time, you will serve somewhere around two years in prison."

Carlson wanted everyone in the courtroom, including the parents and children who attended the sentencing, to know that he felt a period of imprisonment was needed for Thompson.

"Maybe, just maybe, somebody else will think twice about doing this," the judge added.

Thompson was represented by private defense counsel Nicole Sartori of Yorkville.

Mugshot of Ryan Thompson via Will County Sheriff's Department