MARION — John “Jake” Wakey, the Carterville High School assistant football coach and teacher at the center of an ongoing criminal sexual abuse investigation, was arrested Thursday, May 7, in Pontiac, Illinois.
Wakey is charged with nine Class 2 felony counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse involving victims ages 13-17 by a person in a position of trust, according to the court records website Judici.
Wakey is currently being held at the Livingston County Jail.
The Williamson County Sheriff’s Office is holding a press conference later today, Friday, May 9, to provide more details on the arrest. The Carterville Board of Education is holding a special meeting on Tuesday, May 12 at 5 p.m. to take action on the “discipline and/or dismissal of a licensed employee of the District,” according to the meeting agenda.
The arrest comes less than three months after the Willamson County Sheriff’s Office announced it had opened a criminal sexual abuse investigation into an unnamed Carterville school district employee, and nearly 18 months since the FBI first received the original tip.
The investigation and subsequent arrest stems from a November 2024 FBI tip about possible sexual abuse involving former students and a Carterville High School employee.
The FBI determined it did not have jurisdiction to investigate at the time, and referred the information to local law enforcement.
The Carterville school district placed Wakey on paid administrative leave after receiving notification from the sheriff’s office on Feb. 20, that they had begun an investigation into Wakey.
Capitol News Illinois and Saluki Reporting Lab students from the Daily Egyptian later identified Wakey as the subject of the investigation after obtaining subpoenas served to the district.
Williamson County Sheriff Jeff Diederich previously said the case remained largely dormant for 15 months because investigators lacked enough evidence and on-the-record statements to move forward.
In the subpoenas, the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office and the Illinois State Board of Education sought records from Carterville Unit No. 5 School District related to Wakey’s employment. The sheriff’s office sought his personnel and disciplinary records, while a second subpoena requested academic records for 17 former students whose names were redacted by the district. The Illinois State Board of Education also issued a subpoena as part of what it described as a licensure investigation.
Wakey has worked for the Carterville district since 2003 as a teacher and assistant football coach. Records previously obtained by CNI and the DE show that Wakey was suspended for 10 days without pay in 2009 after the district accused him of inappropriately texting students, allowing students to spend time at his home late at night without other adults present, and drinking in front of students before driving to catch a bus to a football game. He was not charged with any crimes at the time.
Additional records obtained by CNI and the DE also show that Wakey began working for the district days after completing court supervision for a misdemeanor conviction for providing liquor to minors in Coles County earlier in 2003.
The case has drawn scrutiny from parents and community members over how long it took to begin an investigation, how the district handled earlier warnings and how communication has been shared since.
Like the sheriff’s office, Carterville school officials have said they did not have enough information involving multiple anonymous tips in the past to conduct an internal investigation or to make a report to child welfare officials, but took immediate action after law enforcement notified the district in February that a former student had provided a formal statement.
Since the investigation became public, Carterville school officials have said they are reviewing employee conduct policies, strengthening training on appropriate communication with students and prohibiting the use of personal technology for school-related communications.
(This story will be updated as more information becomes available.)
The Saluki Local Reporting Lab is a special project of the SIU Carbondale School of Journalism and Advertising and is designed to give students from diverse backgrounds practical reporting experience while providing news coverage to underserved communities.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
This article first appeared on Capitol News Illinois and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
