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Former Alhambra Assistant Superintendent gets 10-Year Prison Term
Pasadena Independent Feb 09, 2015
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Cardosa will be in Prison for the next decade
Victim Jaime C., speaks out after the court sentenced Cardosa.
By Terry Miller
A former school administrator in Alhambra who molested two Riverside County girls — one of whom confronted her in a recorded telephone call posted on YouTube — was sentenced Monday to 10 years in prison on Monday.
Andrea Cardosa will spend the next decade behind bars. She was arrested in Feb. 2014.
Attorneys for Jamie C. held a press conference after the sentencing in the high profile sexual abuse case Monday outlining the case and give the victim a chance to speak out on her pain and suffering at the hands of an adult.
Taylor & Ring represented Jamie C. against the former Riverside teacher who also held a high position in Alhambra school district, Andrea Cardosa, for the sexual abuse of their client while she attended Chemawa Middle School from 1997 to 2001.
At the conclusion of the press conference Jamie C. added the following:
“As a child, I looked up to Andrea Cardosa. I trusted her. She made me think that she was my friend, my mentor, and someone who had my best interest at heart. As an adult, I can see now what she has really done to me. Ms. Cardosa played on my innocence and my vulnerability and knew that I was an easy target.
As an adult, Ms. Cardosa knew it was wrong but she did it anyway.
I’m an adult now, just a few years older than the age Ms. Cardosa was when I first met her. As an adult, I am standing up for my twelve year old self who did not have anyone to fight for her. For that twelve year old child that will be forever lost because you took her away. My twelve year old self never had a chance. She manipulated and brainwashed me and isolated me from my friends and family. I will never know the childhood I was supposed to have because Ms. Cardosa took that from me. Ms. Cardosa got her hooks in me and wouldn’t let go.
Ms. Cardosa made me think that I was getting a life of luxury by giving me things and taking me places but in reality it all came at a price. I paid with my life. A life time of horrible memories of abuse and questions of why that can never be answered.
There is no excuse for what Ms. Cardosa did. When I think about my eleven year old step-daughter and how I would feel if the same thing happened to her and I ask myself, “Would I be okay with her teacher or her coach ‘taking her under their wing’.” As Ms. Cardosa used to say to people about me. My answer is always the same, absolutely not. It is never okay for an adult to betray the trust of a child for any reason. Ms. Cardosa disgusts me.
Because of her, I now live in fear for my own children. I fear for them every day I have to send them to school, with a baby sitter or even church. I fear for them when they are not in my sight because of her. Because I know how easily someone could take away their innocence for their own sick, selfish reasons.
I don’t believe Ms. Cardosa when she said that she “regrets it”. I think the only thing she regrets is getting caught. She even lied when she said I was the only one that she did this to. Another victim, Jane Doe 2, came forward and who knows how many others she has scarred and ruined for the rest of their lives. She knew better. She knew exactly what she was doing. And for that, she deserves to be in jail. Ms.Cardosa has sentenced me to a lifetime of pain, mistrust, bad memories, nightmares, and depression. It has been seventeen years that I have had to live with what she has done to me. She should consider herself lucky that her sentence is not as long as the sentence that she gave to me because if it were up to me, she would stay in jail just as long as I have to endure the hurt that she has caused me.”
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