It turns out that at some schools, teachers who have complaints against them about inappropriate behavior can remain employed until law enforcement finally gets a whiff of what’s going on and arrests said teacher. Sound hard to believe? Well, this is exactly what happened at Roberto Clemente High School. Despite receiving multiple complaints “about inappropriate behavior by a longtime coach and local school council member,” the school kept the coach, Casino Cruz, employed until he was later arrested for “allegedly groping a student nearly a year ago.” Now, parents and two students have filed a civil lawsuit against Cruz and the Chicago Board of Education, “claiming that the district failed to act even after multiple reports about inappropriate behavior by Cruz surfaced, including a 2003 arrest for touching a female student on the swim team.” The district also received complaints about Cruz in 2012 and 2014, according to the lawsuit.
It turns out that at some schools, teachers who have complaints against them about inappropriate behavior can remain employed until law enforcement finally gets a whiff of what’s going on and arrests said teacher. Sound hard to believe? Well, this is exactly what happened at Roberto Clemente High School. Despite receiving multiple complaints “about inappropriate behavior by a longtime coach and local school council member,” the school kept the coach, Casino Cruz, employed until he was later arrested for “allegedly groping a student nearly a year ago.” Now, parents and two students have filed a civil lawsuit against Cruz and the Chicago Board of Education, “claiming that the district failed to act even after multiple reports about inappropriate behavior by Cruz surfaced, including a 2003 arrest for touching a female student on the swim team.” The district also received complaints about Cruz in 2012 and 2014, according to the lawsuit.
As a former volleyball and swim coach, Cruz spent a lot of time around female students, on December 27 he’s expected to stand trial “on misdemeanor battery charges after a 14-year-old girl said he inappropriately touched her thigh on an escalator inside the campus.” Though he was eventually arrested and suspended from coaching at the school, the lawsuit filed earlier this week claims the district and administrators “could have acted years earlier.”
In a statement regarding the matter, attorney John Perkaus said:
“The Board of Ed has been on notice for a long time, since 2003 and as recently as 2014 that Mr. Cruz is a danger and a predator… and he has been allowed to remain at the school, acting as a security guard, as a volleyball coach and dean.”
But what happened? What kind of inappropriate behavior did Cruz display towards female students? Well, according to the lawsuit, in 2012 one student “reported to a teacher that she had been sexually harassed by Cruz and that nothing happened even after that teacher went to school administrators.” Then, in 2014, “another student claimed to have been physically abused by Cruz, and school administrators allegedly did nothing again.”
As if that wasn’t enough, one of the plaintiffs in the suit, who was a “freshman during the 2016-2017 school year while Cruz was a dean and girls volleyball coach,” claims that “on three separate occasions Cruz touched her body in an insulting, provoking, improper and sexual nature.”
According to the lawsuit, Cruz “routinely tested the boundaries of female students with seemingly innocuous acts such as hugging or ‘accidentally’ touching a student in an inappropriate manner or place.”
So how has Cruz and the school responded to the allegations? Well, so far Adam Altman, Cruz’s attorney, is claiming the allegations are false. He added that “Cruz is a graduate of the Northwest Side school, and had worked there for decades.” He also mentioned that he has “several community members ready to testify to Cruz’s good character at the trial later this month.”
Sources:
Lawsuit alleges Clemente HS coach kept job despite complaints
Lawsuit: School could’ve acted sooner over coach allegations
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