A Woman Had an Affair with Her Teen Daughter’s Boyfriend—and Got Pregnant

For 82% of crimes involving child sexual assault, the victim is a young girl. Worldwide, 370 million women experience sexual abuse before age 18, but an understudied pattern of boys also suffer a similar fate.

Like the infamous Mary Kay Letourneau, and the lesser-known Debra Lafave and Pamela Rogers Turner, Robyn Polston has been incarcerated for sexually assaulting a young boy. Polston was not the boy’s teacher, but the mother of his teenage girlfriend.

Since the victim is still a minor, authorities have not revealed his identity.

Polston, a single mother to two teenagers, resided in Washington, Ill., where she worked as a hairdresser. She had been married previously and was known in the community as a dedicated parent to her son and daughter.

In May 2023, Polston was a chaperone for her daughter’s middle school dance, which her daughter attended with a 14-year-old boy as her date. While there was nothing notable about the night, it served as the nexus for the next two years’ events.

It’s unclear what exchanges transpired between Polston and her daughter’s boyfriend after the dance. What is known is that the boy moved away soon after, but he came back to visit “a friend” in April 2024, according to a probable cause affidavit. He continued to make regular trips to the area until he told his family he was moving permanently into his “friend’s” home in August 2024.

In reality, the boy was being groomed into a sexually abusive relationship with 43-year-old Polston.

Dr. Nancy Irwin, an L.A.-based author and licensed clinical psychologist, tells A&E Crime + Investigation a sexual assault victim knows their abuser 90% of the time: “Perpetrators become masters of choosing the vulnerable, lonely, ‘lost’ kid. And for teen boys whose hormones are raging, the sexual attention is hard to pass on. From the waist down, it feels great. From the neck up, it is extraordinarily confusing.”

Within nine months, more details about the sexual abuse came to light.

In January 2025, Polston gave birth to a baby who bore the boy’s middle and last names, according to the affidavit. Yet she claimed the father—whose name was left off the birth certificate—was a man in his 20s named Brian.

By February 2025, Tazewell County police began investigating Polston. They discovered that during her pregnancy, she had had professional maternity photos taken with the boy, who she’d explained was 25 years old with “a baby face.” She’d talked in a breastfeeding support group about her baby father’s height and weight, and had spoken about him in public as a mysterious military man stationed overseas. Investigators discovered Polston and the victim communicated via burner phones with fake names and exchanged a large number of graphic sexual images and videos of them together, most of which were taken by Polston.

Public outrage grew during the investigation. Some people questioned why it took so long for the case to progress, while locals were frustrated as to why Polston hadn’t been arrested. Notably, police had issued a DNA test to determine the baby’s paternity, but the analysis was backlogged by several months.

As Ryan Forensic Laboratory Director Suzanna Ryan explains to A&E Crime + Investigation, a buccal swab from the inside of Polston’s and the victim’s cheeks was the most likely testing method used for the paternity test: “Once a DNA analyst determines which DNA type came from Polston, the other DNA type for the child is called the ‘obligate paternal allele,’ meaning it must have come from the father. If [the victim] does have all of the obligate alleles, then a statistic is calculated to determine the probability of paternity.”

In November 2025, DNA results conclusively proved Polston and the boy were the baby’s parents. This allowed the Tazewell County State's Attorney’s Office to issue a probable clause affidavit against Polston. She was arrested on November 3, 2025, on charges of criminal sexual assault and child pornography.

The charges didn’t surprise Jonathan Amir Hatami, Assistant Head Deputy of the Complex Child Abuse Unit and North Valley Family Violence Division at the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office. “Polston raped a 14-year-old numerous times,” he tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “She moved him into her home. Children legally cannot consent. So, consent would not matter. And she filmed most of this and did all these things in front of the community.”

Polston was denied a pre-trial release before her December 4, 2025, arraignment, as prosecutors called her a “danger” to the community and the victim. She spoke little at her arraignment though maintained her innocence.

Meanwhile, the boy has kept a low profile in a nearby town, away from Polston. Cara Nunnally, Chief Legal Officer at Justice for Children, tells A&E Crime + Investigation that sexual abuse perpetrated by a trusted adult often requires the victim to attend therapy to heal from the experience, especially if it leads to a baby. “The victim will likely need support in navigating the psychological effects of being both an abuse survivor and a parent,” she says.

In April 2026, Polston pled guilty to two counts each of criminal sexual assault and child pornography. She was sentenced to a consecutive 20 years in prison, of which she is required to serve at least 85%. Per Illinois statue, Polston must also register as a sex offender and upon release, she may be kept under supervision for the rest of her life.

Irwin admits that these parameters may not prevent Polston from reoffending. “Without treatment, [perpetrators] certainly can go on to commit more crimes,” she says. “With proper treatment, however, recidivism rates actually are lower for these crimes than many others: about 10%.” While female perpetrators are less likely to reoffend than male perpetrators, sexual offenders against boys tend to have some of the highest recidivism rates within this type of crime.

As such, Nunnally contends Polston’s case is another example of society wrongly glamorizing a young boy-adult woman dynamic: “Just because it does not fit the pattern that we are often used to seeing—an adult male and female child—does not make a teenage boy any less of a victim. The societal narrative needs to shift toward supporting boys in these situations and helping them to heal.”