A former teacher with a long history of child abuse allegations and convictions pleaded guilty earlier month to aggravated battery of a child after he was accused of inappropriate behavior with a 9-year-old boy he was hired to tutor in Orland Park.
Brett Smith, 43, pleaded guilty on July 16. He was sentenced to two years of probation and must register as a violent offender against youth. In exchange for pleading guilty, additional charges of aggravated sexual abuse of a minor and wire fraud were dismissed.
Judge Steven Rosenblum said he agreed to the plea deal in part to avoid traumatizing the 9-year-old victim and other witnesses expected to testify.
Smith worked as a substitute teacher for the Archdiocese of Chicago school system for 16 months before he was fired in January after the latest charges came to light. During that time, he worked in at least four schools on the South Side of Chicago and in the south suburbs, including Queen of Martyrs Catholic School in Evergreen Park.
Queen of Martyrs announced last month it would not reopen for the 2026-2027 school year, citing a decline in projected enrollment.
Smith, of Tinley Park, was arrested by Orland Park police Jan. 29 after an investigation into allegations of sexual abuse involving a 9-year-old boy and the advertising of private tutoring services.
Smith was also charged by Evergreen Park police after he allegedly made unwanted physical contact with a juvenile while working at Queen of Martyrs Catholic School.
Orland Park police began their investigation after parents hired a tutor who identified himself as “BJ S. McAuliffe” to provide tutoring services for their son. The parents later became concerned when the name associated with a requested bank payment appeared as Brett Smith.
The parents conducted an online search of Brett Smith, also known as Brett Zagorac, and located publicly available news articles and videos from other states referencing prior allegations involving children. The parents then contacted the Orland Park Police Department, which prompted a criminal investigation.
During the investigation, Orland Park detectives determined that Brett Zagorac legally changed his name to Brett Smith and utilized several aliases, including BJ S., BJ Smith, and BJ S. McAuliffe, when advertising tutoring services. Following an extensive investigation, detectives established probable cause that Smith engaged in sexual contact with a 9-year-old boy.
Detectives worked in coordination with the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office Crimes Against Persons Unit, and Smith was charged with Aggravated Criminal Sexual Abuse – Class 1 Felony.
Smith was hired by the archdiocese in 2024, having passed background and fingerprint checks.
The archdiocese said that before coming to Queen of Martyrs in January, Smith worked as a long-term substitute teacher at St. Walter-St. Benedict School in Morgan Park and Blue Island during the 2024-25 school year, and as an employee of a third-party vendor assigned to Pope John Paul II School in Brighton Park at the beginning of the 2025-26 school year.
Abuse allegations have followed Smith for more than two decades and have been reported in at least three states – Illinois, Indiana and Arizona.
Smith, under his 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 published reports by the Post-Tribune newspaper.
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, the paper reported.
The case 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.
In 2010, Zagorac was convicted of misdemeanor battery 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 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 while working as a tutor and babysitter at the time, and was accused of sexually abusing a 9-year-old boy in 2014.
Zagorac was fired from substitute teaching jobs in Naperville District 203, Hinsdale District 181 and Schaumburg District 54 in 2005, according to published reports in the Naperville Sun newspaper.
He was accused of inappropriately touching or taking an unusual interest in at least seven preteen students within a three-year period while working at District 203.
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.
In May 2019, court documents in Arizona show he legally changed his name from Brett Zagorac to Brett Smith through Maricopa County after he had been denied a fingerprint clearance card that would have allowed him to work with children, according to Phoenix’s Channel 12 News.
The Arizona Department of Public Safety in 2018 had refused to issue him the fingerprint card because of his criminal history in Illinois and Indiana.