Teacher, 52, kidnapped 15-year-old student then raped her every day as he was on the run with her
A pedophile teacher, 52, sparked a nationwide search after he
kidnapped a 15-year-old student and drove her across the country. It has
now emerged that he raped her every single day during that journey.
Tad Cummins, 52, who was married and has two daughters of his
own, stole his wife’s car and filled a prescription for an erectile
dysfunction drug before he set off across the country with Elizabeth
Thomas.
Cummins’ was Elizabeth Thomas’ health teacher. He is reported to have
taken advantage of ‘a broken girl who was lonely, scared and
traumatized.’
Cummins and the teen were on the run for weeks after he took her from
rural Tennessee to a remote cabin in California in 2017. The national
manhunt ended when Cummin was arrested at a California cabin.
One year after the incident, Thomas narrated her ordeal in a victim statement, saying:
I was scared. I don’t want to tell my parents that a grown man kissed
me. I don’t want to tell my friends that a grown man kissed me.It was fourth period. Next thing I know, he said, “You’d look pretty nice naked.
According to Thomas, Cummins began by raping her in the closet of his high school classroom.
She said:
He’d open up his closet door and look at me a certain way and I knew
if I didn’t go in he’d be upset and I was afraid to see him angry.
Cummins was suspended from the school after someone at the school saw
them kissing on a school bus and reported him. But he convinced Thomas
to leave with him as he fled town.
Elizabeth Thomas said:
He said that if he couldn’t have me he’d kill himself.
A while after Cummins was arrested following weeks of a police
search, Thomas told authorities that she and Cummins had sex ‘every day
as they traveled from state to state.’
In court on Wednesday, January 16, Thomas’ victim statement was read
by Assistant US Attorney Sarah Meyers. In the statement, Thomas referred
to Cummins as a ‘sick, disgusting criminal’ who ‘violate me over and
over again for months.’
The victim statement also reads: ‘You preyed upon a vulnerable girl. I will live with the scars you left on me forever.’
Cummins pleaded guilty to transporting a minor across state lines for
sex and obstructing justice and was sentenced to 20 years in prison on
Wednesday.
He broke down crying in court and apologized for the harm he caused
Thomas and his own family, including his wife and two daughters who were
in the courtroom. Cummins called the kidnapping a ‘misguided attempt to
help that went sideways in a way I don’t know I’ll ever understand.’
Cummins and his wife
He told the victim’s family in court: ‘If someone had done this to
one of my girls I would want to hurt them, and I fully understand if you
feel that way about me.’