A former substitute teacher fired from the Chicago Archdiocese in January was ordered detained Friday on felony aggravated sexual abuse of a minor and wire fraud charges.
Brett Smith, 43, is accused of engaging in sexual contact with a 9-year-old boy he was hired to tutor at the home of the child’s parents in Orland Park.
Cook County Associate Judge Steven Jay Rosenblum said Smith should be detained while the case is pending as he poses a threat to the community as a whole.
“I won’t be responsible for what happens to other children,” Rosenblum said.
Smith was initially ordered detained after his January arrest by Judge William N. Fahy, but Smith was granted a fresh detention hearing after Fahy recused himself, having realized he may have represented Smith in the past.
Rosenblum said he based his decision on prior cases across two states where Smith was accused of having inappropriate conduct with children he was working with as a teacher or tutor, sometimes using aliases.
Assistant Cook County State’s Attorney’s Krista Peterson alleged Friday that Smith rubbed the Orland Park child’s back under his shirt during all 14 tutoring sessions from December to January. The child also reported Smith multiple times placed the child’s pen on his upper thigh or groin area, where the child would have to grab it to continue his work.
Defense attorney Steven A. Greenberg said Smith “has an issue of rubbing backs,” adding, “I don’t know why he keeps doing it.” But he said past cases brought against Smith show he is not guilty of more than that.
“With all of these allegations against him over the years, what ends up happening is when they get into the nitty gritty, there is no meat on the bones of the allegations,” Greenberg said.
Smith was also charged in Evergreen Park in January with misdemeanor battery. Prosecutors say he made unwanted physical contact with a juvenile while working at Queen of Martyrs Catholic school, placing his hand on the student’s hand and pressing his upper back onto the student’s back while conducting a school-related activity.
The archdiocese listed several names the teacher has used in the past, including Brett Zagorac, before legally changing his name.
Orland Park police previously said parents of a child Smith was tutoring under the alias BJ S. McAuliffe became concerned when the name for a requested bank payment appeared as Brett Smith.
After unearthing news articles and videos detailing prior allegations made about Smith’s behavior toward other children, the parents contacted Orland Park police, prompting a criminal investigation.
Smith was hired by the archdiocese in 2024, having passed background and fingerprint checks, and worked at at least four schools on the South Side of Chicago and in the south suburbs over the past 16 months. He started substitute teaching at Queen of Martyrs in January.
A parent of a student at Queen of Martyrs made the archdiocese aware of past allegations, the archdiocese said.
“Upon learning these allegations, we took immediate action to bar him from our schools and he has been terminated,” said the letter, signed by Greg Richmond, the superintendent of schools, and Leah Heffernan, director of the archdiocese’s office for the protection of children and youth.
A lawsuit filed in January alleges Smith began grooming and inappropriately touching a Queen of Martyrs student “immediately upon being hired” there. The lawsuit was brought by the student’s parent, who is unnamed.
The lawsuit alleges the grooming included Smith “bestowing disingenuous and inordinate adulation” onto the student while forcing bodily contact with the student while the student was confined to his desk.
The lawsuit names Smith, the Chicago Archdiocese, Queen of Martyrs priest the Rev. Ritchie Ortiz-Juárez and former Principal Stephen Davidson as defendants.
Davidson was named principal of Queen of Martyrs in 2023 but no longer works there. Beth Guerrero was appointed interim principal last month.
The lawsuit alleges the defendants were aware of past allegations of sexual misconduct by Smith when they hired him. It states that a parent in a nearby suburb filed a complaint with the local police department alleging Smith “perpetrated unauthorized and harmful bodily contact of her minor child during a tutoring session” before Smith was hired at Queen of Martyrs.
The lawsuit also alleges that another archbishop, teacher or representative was present when Smith engaged second grade students with reading materials used by persons intending to groom minors for sexual victimization.
The reading materials, while not sexually explicit, employ language often used as sexual slang, that could “deceive and delude minors that sexual touching between adults and minors is acceptable,” the lawsuit alleges.
Smith worked as a long-term substitute teacher at St. Walter-St. Benedict School in Chicago during the 2024-2025 school year, as a third party vendor at Pope John Paul II Catholic School in Chicago at the beginning of the 2025-2026 school year and as a substitute teacher at Queen of Martyrs Catholic School in January 2026.
Smith, under former name Zagorac, was charged in 2002 with two counts of misdemeanor battery in Lake County, Indiana, for inappropriately touching two students while he was working at Peifer Elementary School in Schererville. He was convicted a year later and sentenced to 90 days in jail, fined $250 and placed on one year of probation, according to the Post-Tribune.
While working as a substitute teacher at Edison Elementary School in Hammond in 2005, Zagorac was charged with child molestation for allegedly touching an 8-year-old boy inappropriately two years earlier, according to the Post-Tribune. Police reported that Zagorac touched the student’s rear, put his hand under his shirt and rubbed his back and fondled him outside his clothing after calling him up to the teacher’s desk to talk about an assignment.
The first trial ended in a mistrial, and the charges were later dropped after the victim’s mother said the boy was ill and afraid to come to court to testify, the Post-Tribune reported.
Zagorac was fired from substitute teaching jobs in Naperville District 203, Hinsdale District 181 and Schaumburg District 54 in 2005, after the districts realized their background checks did not extend beyond Illinois’ borders, according to the Naperville Sun.
He was later charged with criminal sexual abuse and battery of 13 elementary school students in Naperville and Downers Grove. On the day he was supposed to go to trial in 2007, he pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor battery charge involving a child and was sentenced to 20 days in the DuPage County Jail and fined $250, according to the DuPage County state’s attorney’s office.
Zagorac’s arrest record was expunged erroneously from the FBI National Crime Information Center computer in 2009, the Post-Tribune reported, after defense attorney Christopher Schmidgall filed a petition for the expungement. Lake Superior Court Judge pro tem Susan Severtson, acting on the recommendation of Magistrate Natalie Bokota, directed authorities to reconstruct his arrest record.
Zagorac was convicted of misdemeanor battery again in 2010 for inappropriately touching a 5-year-old student he was tutoring in Portage, Indiana, in 2009. He was sentenced to 180 days in jail but was released at the time because he had already served 184 days while awaiting trial on the original charges of felony child molestation, according to the Post-Tribune.
In 2015, he pleaded guilty to battery, aggravated sexual abuse and grooming in Wilmette, though the Cook County court records remain sealed. According to the Post-Tribune, he worked as a tutor and babysitter at the time, and was accused of sexually abusing a 9-year-old boy in 2014.
ostevens@chicagotribune.com
