15 years in prison for Catholic school teacher accused of sex with 15-year-old

A Catholic high school teacher from Coral Springs arrested for enticing a 15-year-old student to have sex with him has been sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Boris Fernando Bastidas was also given 25 years of supervised release at his sentencing on Tuesday.

The 35-year-old had been arrested by the FBI in March at his Coral Springs apartment that he shared with his wife on charges of coercion and enticement of a minor to engage in criminal sexual activity and traveling in interstate or foreign commerce for the purpose of engaging in any illicit sexual conduct with another person.

He pleaded guilty in the case in June and had been facing a minimum 10-year sentence and a maximum of life in prison, court records showed.

Bastidas had been a teacher at Chaminade-Madonna College Preparatory, a Catholic high school in Hollywood, where he was the chair of the social studies department and had been awarded "Educator of the Year" by the school in 2023.

A lengthy criminal complaint detailed the shocking allegations against Bastidas that were uncovered after an investigation that began about a month before his arrest.

The student told investigators Bastidas had been her teacher her freshman year, and she had asked him for help in running for sophomore vice president.

They emailed throughout summer 2023, at first through their school emails and later through personal email accounts, and in August 2023 Bastidas told she was more than a student to him, the complaint said.

A search of the teen's email account found that in August 2023, they discussed meeting up, possibly where the teen worked, the complaint said.

Bastidas told the teen it was "the dangerous not so smart thing to try and do," the complaint said. "If I saw you on the job that would least be funny and cute, probably just make fun of you, but once my mind starts imagining things about if I was there and you were too I can only get myself into trouble."

They continued to discuss meeting up, which they apparently did at a Dunkin on Aug. 9, 2023, the complaint said. Afterwards, they discussed having met up and described holding hands and kissing.

"Today we are going to touch and kiss and stuff, so itll make tonight feel so much better," Bastidas wrote the teen on Aug 12, 2023. "Ill just say that so much these last two nights have been about you moving and working it and pleasuring me, so now its gonna be time for me to do something that involves moving and thrusting and satisfying you."

In another message, Bastidas discussed the sex acts he wanted to perform on the teen, the complaint said.

"Ill always love you. I need you, I wanna love you," Bastidas wrote the teen in a September 2023 message, according to the complaint.

"Boris I'll always love you too, I need you so much, and I want your love, I wanna give you my love," the teen responded.

"There's not a lot I would do, to risk so much of my professional life, my reputation, even my personal life for…but for some reason [teen's name], you make me risk it all," Bastidas wrote the teen in October 2023.

The teen said over the course of their relationship they engaged in oral sex twice, once in a shopping plaza parking lot where the teen worked in Miramar and again at an abandoned parking lot in Hollywood, the complaint said.

Then in January, during a school Model UN trip to New York, Bastidas and the teen had sex in his hotel room while he was her chaperone, the complaint said.

Investigators also found sexual material of the teen on her phone, which she said she took herself and sent to Bastidas, the complaint said.

In court, federal prosecutors said Bastidas groomed the teen, enticing her to fall in love with him through gifts like jewelry and clothes.

School officials said Bastidas had been fired when the allegations surfaced. Records showed his wife filed for divorce from him in April, shortly after his arrest.