Elena Bardin, a 28-year-old Kentucky teacher, received a 14-year prison sentence for sexual abuse and illegal conduct with a 17-year-old detained at Adair Juvenile Detention Center. She was convicted in September 2024 after staff discovered letters and explicit materials during a routine room check in March.
During the trial, prosecutors revealed Bardin sent 193 letters to the teenage inmate containing extremely graphic content that Circuit Judge Samuel Spalding compared to adult films. Police found that she admitted to sexual acts with the boy in her letters and sent him nude photographs of herself.
According to The Sun, Bardin was initially charged with soliciting the teenager to murder her husband Michael, but the jury acquitted her of that charge. She claimed her comments about her husband were merely jokes and not serious threats.
She got a warning but kept doing it anyway
Things got even worse when it came out that people at the detention center had already told Bardin to stop talking to the boy. They even moved him to a different part of the building to try to keep them apart. But Judge Spalding said Bardin did not listen at all. He said it looked like she actually did more of the same stuff after being warned, which really worried him.
The teenage boy had to speak in court during the trial, and so did Bardin’s husband. The boy told everyone that he only kept up the relationship because he was bored while being locked up. He also said he never planned to hurt Bardin’s husband or anyone else.
Kentucky teacher Elena Bardin, 27, was convicted of abusing a teen and sending explicit messages. She faces up to 14 years. Law&Crime’s Chris Stewart @cstewartnews is On the Case. pic.twitter.com/umolkZm48v
— Law&Crime Network (@LawCrimeNetwork) October 17, 2025
Bardin chose not to talk when it was her turn, and the lawyers working for her did not bring anyone to speak on her behalf during the two days of the trial.
When the judge told Bardin what her punishment would be on November 13, 2024, she did not show any feelings at all. She was found guilty on three different charges but not guilty of trying to get someone killed.
Elena Bardin, 27, a married teacher at the Adair County Juvenile Detention Center in Kentucky, has been sentenced to 14 years in prison for sexually abusing a 17-year-old inmate. Bardin was convicted of first-degree sexual abuse & unlawful transaction with a minor.
— True Crime Updates (@TrueCrimeUpdat) November 16, 2025
Authorities… pic.twitter.com/96D21HamAB
“The letters you sent, which they were juicy, they were things you’d see in a triple-x movie, and completely inappropriate, obviously, and I think you know that for a young man that age,” the judge said.
The verdict says that she would go to prison for 14 years, and those years would be served one after another, not at the same time. She also got 12 more months for sending dirty material to a kid, but that time will happen while she is already doing the other years.
After Bardin gets out of prison, she will have to put her name on the sex offender list for 20 years. When all this happened, she was married and had a little kid who was five years old. Her husband asked for a divorce after she got arrested. Judge Spalding said Bardin was clearly a smart woman who could write well, but she made really bad choices and did not respect the rules that teachers are supposed to follow.
