PG County School Coach Gets 35 Years For Child Sex Abuse: Report

PRINCE GEORGE'S COUNTY, MD -- A former basketball coach at elementary schools in Prince George's County has been sentenced to 35 years in prison over a series of child pornography and sex abuse charges, including one shocking incident where he threatened to hurt a 7-year-old if he didn't sent him sexually explicit images, according to a report.

The Washington Post reports that Christopher Speights taught at Bradbury Heights Elementary School and John Eager Howard Elementary School for 13 years as well as coached sports at Bradbury Heights and for the South County Steelers in 2015 and 2016. He was arrested last year thanks to a tip.

In one particularly shocking incident, a mother who trusted Speights wept in front of him as they sat in the car about how someone was leaving voice messages for her 7-year-old threatening to beat him up if he didn't send sexually explicit images, only to find out two years later that it was him all along, according to the report.

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Speights turned to that woman and other parents in the courtroom to apologize before his sentencing.

Speights reportedly admitted to secretly recording children and blackmailing them to get pictures.

“He had ingratiated himself in the community so much that the person [parents] trusted to go to to report these type of things was the perpetrator,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy F. Hagan said according to the Post. “That is what makes him so dangerous.”

Speights claims that he himself was sexually abused as a child.

Image of Bradbury Heights Elementary School via Google Maps