Genaro Vela was respected. He was a teacher and a coach. A Scoutmaster. He was also a child molester. If the first victim told school officials in 2000,

Mission school district employees knew about allegations that teacher and Boy Scout leader Genaro Vela sexually abused a child in 2000, but did not report them to police, according to police officials and a review of documents recently made public.

Although schools officials said they contacted Child Protective Services and conducted an internal investigation into the 2000 allegations, their failure to notify police may have allowed Vela to continue abusing children, police officials said.

And interviews with prosecutors, police, Vela’s defense attorney and others suggest that CPS never looked into the allegations.

“There wasn’t a defined understanding about what needed to be done about these kinds of incidents,” said Mission Police Chief Leo Longoria. “It’s now understood that these are no longer administrative problems.”

School officials, Longoria noted, are required by law to report all allegations to either CPS or local police.

Vela was arrested in June 2006, after several former Boy Scouts told Mission police that he had sexually abused and inappropriately touched them over the years.

At least one accusation came from an incident that occurred years after school officials heard abuse allegations in 2000.

Last month, Vela pleaded guilty to sexual assault, attempted sexual assault and child

indecency charges.

According to documents prepared for Vela’s criminal cases, a ninth-grader told school officials in April 2000 that Vela had sexually assaulted him several times in the mid-1990s, including on at least one Boy Scout trip.

The documents, including sworn statements by school district officials, were included in Vela’s criminal court file about two weeks ago. They have not been discussed in court because Vela’s guilty plea eliminated the prospect of a jury trial.

If Vela’s cases went to trial, prosecutors were going to use the statements to try to disprove defense claims that Vela’s accusers only came forward in the summer of 2006 — after he became the target of an unrelated child pornography investigation that also resulted in a conviction.

Although Vela has pleaded guilty, school officials’ statements are expected to play a key role in a lawsuit being prepared by lawyers for the ninth-grader, who is now a 22-year-old college student.

The students’ statements to Mission police in the summer of 2006 led to one of the indecency charges to which Vela pleaded guilty. Because the student said the sexual assault took place outside Hidalgo County, local prosecutors could not pursue those allegations.

The student’s lawsuit is expected to allege that school officials covered up for Vela and did not protect children. It is The Monitor’s policy to not identify victims of sexual assault.

Citing the looming lawsuit, school officials declined to comment on the matter.

“I can’t speak to anything until the other shoe drops,” said Superintendent Oscar Rodriguez, referring to the lawsuit. “There’s no sense talking about things we don’t know anything about.”

However, for any lawsuit to have a strong chance of winning, the student’s lawyers would have to prove that the school district covered up the abuse allegations. Otherwise, the district might be able to prevail since schools are often immune from criminal and civil litigation.

Looking Back

While court documents and interviews by The Monitor found no evidence of a cover-up, they revealed that:

• At least four employees — including the principal — at the old Mission Ninth Grade Campus heard from a ninth-grade boy in April 2000 that Vela had assaulted him in the mid 1990s. But the boy said CPS never interviewed him.

• In sworn statements, school employees said in 2006 that they reported the 2000 abuse allegations to CPS. But Hidalgo County prosecutors found no evidence that CPS was contacted in April 2000. And Mission police officials — who said CPS would have contacted them in any investigation — said they did not know about the abuse allegations until the summer of 2006.

• After being notified about the allegations in April 2000, Vela tried to kill himself by overdosing on Advil. His lawyer said Vela submitted a written statement to school officials, but was not disciplined and not interviewed by CPS. Vela retired from teaching on his own accord in May 2004, after 30 years on the job.

For several years, the student did not tell anyone that Vela assaulted him as a 9- and 10-year-old Boy Scout, according to his statement to police. But in April 2000, no longer a Boy Scout, he ran into Vela, his former leader and middle school math teacher.

That led to a breakdown.

T

he student, crying in the dressing room during drama class, told his story to the drama teacher, who promptly referred him to counselor Ruben Lopez and social worker Jose Homero Cedillo.

The boy was eventually sent to Ninth Grade Campus Principal Omar De La Rosa. In the principal’s office, the student signed a written statement saying that Vela had assaulted him.

In affidavits and an internal school memo included in Vela’s criminal file, Cedillo, Lopez and De La Rosa said they notified CPS, as the school is required to do under state law and its own guidelines. They said they also reported the allegations to the district’s central office.

De La Rosa said he believed that a police officer assigned to the campus was also notified.

Neither Cedillo nor Lopez said that police were called.

“After everything was submitted to Mission Independent School District Central Office,” De La Rosa said in a court affidavit, “I was not sure what actions were taken since I was not Mr. Genaro Vela’s immediate supervisor.”

Following a paper trail

Citing confidentiality rules, Austin-based CPS spokesman Patrick Crimmins said he could not say whether Vela has ever been investigated.

But Assistant District Attorney Kim Leo, who prosecuted Vela, said CPS officials told her that they had no records on file for Vela.

However, she noted, if CPS did investigate Vela in 2000 and found no wrongdoing, it would not have kept its records for longer than six months because of department policy.

De La Rosa and Cedillo, who are no longer school employees, declined to comment about their actions in 2000, saying they didn’t want to affect the impending lawsuit.

Lopez also would not comment, saying he felt uncomfortable talking about confidential discussions between him and the student.

But police, prosecutors and Vela’s lawyer said the district launched an internal investigation into the assault allegations.

“I’m not sure what their findings were, unfounded or uncorroborated,” Longoria, the police chief, said. “But it was never reported to us.”

Santos Maldonado, Vela’s attorney, said his client submitted a statement in 2000 to unidentified school officials denying the student’s claims.

“I deny the accusations made by the young man,” said Maldonado, directly quoting Vela’s letter, which he would not provide to The Monitor.

“There were no allegations that were substantiated,” Maldonado said. “Why the principal didn’t report it to police … I don’t know.”

Still, the allegations put Vela under enormous pressure, Maldonado said.

April 2000

On the morning of April 17, 2000, Vela tried to kill himself by taking 30 Advil pills, according to a police report.

“He told me that he did not want to be around anymore, because someone had accused him of something,” said Melinda Vela Carlos, Vela’s adult daughter, recalling the incident in a June 2006 affidavit for police.

“He did not tell (me) what he was being accused of. … After that, I never heard about anything else.”

Indeed, shortly after Vela submitted his statement, Vela didn’t hear about the allegations again until June 2006, when he was arrested, according to Maldonado.

“He was never interviewed by CPS,” Maldonado said.

Although the district was conducting an internal inquiry, the school board president at the time, Eduardo Olivarez, said he didn’t know about any allegations during his tenure.

“This whole thing with Genaro caught me by total surprise when he was arrested,” said Olivarez, who said he has known Vela for about 30 years. “I never knew any accusations or reporting of them. I did not have any inkling or clue of any suspicions or concerns.

“If I would’ve known about this, I would’ve reported it immediately.”

H.F. “Jackie” Dyer, the school’s superintendent in 2000, said he did not recall Vela, nor any sexual assault accusations made against him.

He also noted that he took office around April 1, 2000, two weeks before the ninth-grader approached school employees.

“I can’t say 100 percent that I didn’t know about it,” said Dyer, now the schools superintendent in Sierra Blanca, south of El Paso. “That was a long time ago.

“It’s a terrible thing, these allegations, and I would pray that my very competent staff did their job and that we protected the kid.”

A system breaks down

Police officials were similarly taken aback in summer 2006 when they found out about the boy’s allegations.

In 2000, Longoria said, there was good cooperation between police and school officials, but not a “distinct, clear line of authority” that let school employees know to report any sexual assault and indecency allegations to police.

“Back in those days, the school administration handled a lot of things internally,” Longoria said. “I say, if in doubt, report it. You can’t ever get in trouble for being too cautious.”

However, school district officials can get in trouble for failing to report a crime.

As noted in the district’s own procedural handbook, it is a Class B misdemeanor if someone doesn’t notify the authorities about possible sex crimes.

Because the statute of limitations has expired, Longoria said his department has not looked into charging officials with failing to properly report the boy’s allegations from 2000.

“In the future, we’re going to pursue them, whether they’re an administrator, teacher, parent or guardian.”

In a recent interview, the 22-year-old at the center of the controversy said he didn’t report the allegations as a 10-year-old because he was embarrassed and thought no one would believe him.

Vela, he noted, was a Mission icon — a teacher, Little League coach and Boy Scout leader to thousands of children over the years.

And as a ninth-grader, he and his mother thought school officials were going to help.

“I believed them,” the 22-year-old said. “I thought they were doing everything they could.”

But following a meeting with school officials in April 2000, the boy and his mother — who will not be named to protect her son’s identity — had second thoughts and headed to the Mission Police Department.

“I told my son we should report it because there may be other victims,” the mother said in a June 2006 affidavit.

It was after 5 p.m. and they kept ringing a buzzer in the department’s lobby to speak to someone.

“No one answered us, so (my son) started getting really nervous and wanted to leave,” she said. “I told him ‘OK,’ since I knew that the school would report the incident to the police department.”

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Michael Barnett covers law enforcement and general assignments for The Monitor. He can be reached at (956) 683-4447.