A former Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) teacher was sentenced to 30 years in prison with all but 12 months suspended after pleading guilty to charges related to sexually abusing a middle school student in 2015, according to a Tuesday statement from the Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office.
Melissa Curtis, 32, of Upper Marlboro, will also serve five years of supervised probation upon release and will be required to register as a sex offender for 25 years. As a condition of her probation, she won’t be permitted to have unsupervised contact with minors other than her children.
Judge Theresa Chernosky sentenced Curtis on Friday, after she pleaded guilty to three counts of third-degree sex offense on June 20. Audrey Creighton, Curtis’s lawyer, declined to comment on the case.
Curtis was charged with sexual abuse of a minor in November 2023. According to 2023 charging documents, Curtis sexually abused a 14-year-old boy for several months in 2015, with some of the incidents taking place on the grounds and in a classroom at Montgomery Village Middle School.
According to the 2023 charging documents, the victim said the abuse began in 2015 when he was attending the school, which was where Curtis was teaching. At the time the abuse started, Curtis was 22 years old.
The incidents occurred in her car, at their homes and inside the school, according to the charging documents. The victim alleged Curtis had sexual intercourse with him at least 20 times in the months that the incidents occurred. According to the state’s attorney’s office statement, the victim volunteered for an after-school project Curtis was running.
Curtis taught at MCPS for two years, including at Lakelands Park Middle School in Gaithersburg. After working in MCPS, Curtis’s lawyer said during a bond hearing in 2023 that Curtis was working at the Legends Charter School in Lanham in Prince George’s County.
— Former MoCo360 reporter Courtney Cohn contributed to this report
