CHICAGO – Michael Young met a 14-year-old girl on a telephone chat line and took her to an Indiana motel to have sex.

Steven Wenger used the Internet to arrange sex with a boy, but it turned out the “child” he’d had explicit online conversations with was actually a Chicago police officer.

Gerald Huddleston blindfolded three Livingston County girls, all younger than 12, and forced them into performing oral sex.

All were Illinois teachers when they committed the crimes, authorities said.

They are just three of at least 25 former Illinois educators whose teaching licenses were revoked or suspended due to sexual misconduct over a five-year period. The list, compiled from 2001 to 2005, reveals a litany of loathsome acts ranging from sexual assault to child pornography, according to the Illinois State Board of Education.

“In any profession you’ve got a minority, a small portion, a bad apple that causes problems for everyone,” said Rep. Dan Brady, a Bloomington Republican who sponsored a law that goes into effect in June requiring police to tell a school superintendent if an employee is suspected in a sex crime. Before, districts could request police records if an employee was investigated, but in the future authorities will be obligated to tell schools of an arrest.

“It’s always that there was some loophole, some this or that, that’s how they were able to continue doing what they were doing,” Brady said. “There has to be somebody who’s held accountable.”

Illinois’ figures were gathered as part of a seven-month investigation in which AP reporters sought records on teacher discipline in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Across the country, sexual misconduct allegations led states to take action against the licenses of 2,570 educators from 2001 through 2005. That figure includes licenses that were revoked, denied and surrendered. There are about 3 million public school teachers in the United States.

ISBE reviews allegations and other evidence in each case when deciding whether to revoke or suspend a teacher’s license, said spokesman Matt Vanover.

Twenty-two of the teachers have registered as sex offenders. Fifteen are “sexual predators,” meaning they have to re-register every year for the rest of their lives.

Some of them were considered standout educators.

These teachers will never again see the inside of an Illinois classroom. But a recent high-profile case has some worried that Illinois doesn’t do enough to track teachers who could be serial sexual predators.

Jon Andrew White is charged in Champaign County with molesting nine girls while teaching second grade at Thomas Paine Grade School in Urbana. After those allegations surfaced, authorities say victims came forward in McLean County, where White previously worked as a first-grade teacher. Now he also faces charges that he allegedly abused two students at Colene Hoose Elementary School in Normal.

White has pleaded not guilty to all the charges. Urbana spokesman Mark Schultz declined to comment on White, citing the pending legal case. A Unit 5 spokeswoman did not return messages from The Associated Press.

“It’s not just that case, but (White) might be the straw that broke the camel’s back for me,” said Brady, who has also proposed a bill currently stalled in the House requiring superintendents to disclose sex abuse allegations against teachers when another district asks for a reference – even if the teacher hasn’t been formally charged.

The Illinois School Code requires background investigations for all applicants, including teachers, food service workers and school bus drivers. School boards can’t knowingly hire people who have been convicted of a variety of crimes, including sex offenses.