PRESS RELEASE: PARENT OF 5-YEAR OLD AUSTIN ISD STUDENT SEXUALLY ASSAULTED REPEATEDLY BY AISD SCHOOL BUS DRIVER SPEAKS OUT
May 21, 2020
FEDERAL CIVIL RIGHTS LAWSUIT REVEALS MANY PREVIOUS AISD SEXUAL ASSAULTS AND PATTERN OF COVER-UP IN AISD POLICE INVESTIGATIONS
May 21, 2020:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
For the first time Crystal Ayon, the mother of a 5-year old AISD student, speaks out about her daughter being sexually assaulted multiple times by AISD bus driver Cesar Maldanado. Incredibly, the investigation into the case revealed many very young AISD students being sexually assaulted at AISD schools and a complete failure of the AISD to take the steps necessary to prevent future events from happening. See attached federal lawsuit.
AISD had installed cameras in the bus but failed to monitor or review the video allowing Crystal’s daughter to be sexually assaulted on at least three separate occasions.
AISD had a monitor assigned to the bus but AISD allowed the monitors to leave the bus with bus drivers and children still on the bus as happened in Crystal’s daughter’s case-even when there was a previous incident of an AISD school bus driver sexually assaulting a 6 year-old girl on a bus multiple times!
As if it could not be worse, AISD used it’s own police to investigate most student sexual assault cases and actively discouraged victims’ parents of contacting the Austin Police Department or outside police agency. AISD police did not collect the simplest and most basic of evidence such as Rape Kits or even interviewing the perpetrator in a timely manner or at all in some cases.
“Whenever you have the fox guarding the henhouse, the hens get eaten,” said civil rights lawyer Randall Kallinen, ” Austin ISD had its own police investigate these multiple student sexual assaults who demonstrated an extreme bias in favor of the District over the students. It is time to do something.”
Just a sampling of the child sexual assaults occurring at AISD include:
In 2014-15, a minor six-year-old child was sexually assaulted on an AISD bus by an AISD bus driver, Ralph Leon Young. The sexual assault of the minor child occurred on an ongoing basis from April 25, 2014, to April 17, 2015. It was not until two juvenile witnesses reported the sexual assault of the minor child that any attention and action was brought to the heinous acts occurring on the AISD school bus.
In 2013 and 2014, another AISD teacher Alfredo Andrade-Gaytan, molested multiple students, sometimes during school hours and in the middle of his classroom. Gayton was sentenced to twenty-five (25) years in prison for the sexual abuse of three students.
In February 2017 a four year old was molested and severely injured by sexual assault at Boone Elementary in the Austin ISD by a teacher. Several parents then reported similar incidents at Boone.
There will be a press conference at the Austin ISD headquarters with the parents and their lawyers.
DATE: May 22, 2020 at 11:00 AM
PLACE: Austin ISD Administration Building (outside), 4000 South IH 35, Austin
CONTACT: Attorney Randall Kallinen (713.320.3785) or James Amaro of the Amaro Law Firm (713.864.1941)
The Ayon Family is represented by James Amaro of the Amaro Law Firm (713-864-1941) and Randall L. Kallinen of Kallinen Law PLLC (713.320.3785).
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