Elena Bardin and her husband, via the New York Post.
This story was in the Lexington Herald-Leader, but, adhering to the McClatchy mugshot policy, the Kentucky newspaper didn’t print the mugshot of the accused. Fortunately, the New York Post did.
Police: Kentucky teacher had sexual contact with minor, asked him to kill her husband
By Bill Estep | Updated April 4, 2025 | 11:31 AM EDT
Police have charged a Kentucky school teacher with giving sexually explicit material to a male juvenile and soliciting him to kill her husband.
Kentucky State Police arrested Elena Bardin, 27, of Columbia on Wednesday, according to a news release.
Police said workers at the Adair Regional Juvenile Detention Center did a routine search of juveniles’ living quarters on March 27 and found letters and explicit material in one teen’s belongings, allegedly sent by an Adair County teacher assigned to the center.
Even before I accessed Mrs Bardin’s picture online, I noticed that the report specified that the victim in this case is male. It’s when the reports decline to specify the victim’s sex that I wonder if the sexual abuse was homosexual in nature.
The reports do not tell us for what the student was incarcerated, but the Adair Learning Center, where Mrs Bardin was listed as a teacher, states, on its website:
The mission of Adair Youth Development Center is to provide treatment opportunities for boys and girls committed to the Department of Juvenile Justice, who are classified as a Level V Security-Risk (maximum security). Youth committed to the center will have an Individual Treatment Plan that outlines specific goals of rehabilitation and learning. Each youth will also have individualized academic instruction designed to earn credits toward receipt of their high school diploma or GED. The instruction and treatment provided at Adair Youth Development Center is designed to prepare the youth for reintroduction into a less secure placement and ultimate release to the community.
Yeah, not a good look.
This is part of the Adair County School District, which means that Mrs Bardin had to have at least a bachelor’s degree; she had to have gone to college, but apparently going to college doesn’t mean that you can’t be absolutely boneheadedly stupid. If she wanted to be rid of her husband she could have divorced him, and while that would have been uncomfortable, she wouldn’t be in jail right now, accused of trying to have him killed.
She was working in a juvenile prison; how could she not have known that the inmates’ quarters are occasionally searched?
Mrs Bardin is, of course, innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.