Accused of grooming and raping a Chicago Public Schools student, a senior security officer at Farragut Career Academy High School was arrested and charged with criminal sexual assault this week.
During the 2022-23 school year, the security guard, Romel Campoverde, 43, allegedly began Snapchatting with the 15-year-old student and meeting her outside of school, buying the student alcohol and shoes and giving her money, prosecutors said in bond court Wednesday. According to the Cook County state’s attorney’s office, Campoverde met the student again in late June and, after giving her multiple tequila drinks, brought the girl to an RV where he sexually assaulted her.
The student told an after-school program employee the day after the alleged assault, and police subsequently found two of the student’s press-on nails in Campoverde’s RV, prosecutors said.
Campoverde remained in custody as of Thursday evening, according to the Cook County sheriff’s office website. His lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment. Judge Ankur Srivastava set Campoverde’s bond at $100,000 and ordered him to have no contact with the student, her family members or any juveniles and to undergo electronic monitoring if he is released on bond while awaiting trial.
Chicago Public Schools provided a copy of a letter that Farragut Principal Tonya Hammaker recently sent parents. The letter didn’t identify Campoverde by name, but Hammaker wrote that a non-teaching staff member had been accused of engaging inappropriately with a student and removed from the school, adding that the CPS Office of the Inspector General had begun investigating the incident.
“Based on the information learned during the OIG’s investigation, a final determination will be made regarding whether it is appropriate for this individual to return to Farragut,” Hammaker wrote. “Please know that we are taking this situation seriously, and we remain committed to providing your children with a safe, positive learning environment where they can reach their full potential.”
The new accusations come after years of reckoning over what federal officials deemed in 2019 to be “appalling,” district-wide “failures” in CPS’ handling of sexual abuse allegations. After investigating more than 3,000 complaints filed over four years, involving 400 CPS schools, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights entered the district into a legally binding agreement, mandating reforms and federal monitoring through the end of the 2021-22 school year.
Amid the scandal, the OIG’s office formed its now 30-member Sexual Allegations Unit, after a Chicago Tribune report exposed conflicts of interest in investigations formerly helmed by the CPS Law Department. The OIG’s office now investigates all adult-to-student sexual misconduct complaints, referring cases involving other forms of student harassment to CPS’ Office of Student Protections.
In a presentation before the Board of Education in January, Deputy Inspector General Amber Nesbitt, head of the Sexual Allegations Unit, said adult-to-student sexual misconduct was the most common complaint received by the agency in the prior year. The more than 300 complaints substantiated by the Sexual Allegations Unit since its 2018 inception include a finding of “systemic sexual misconduct” at Marine Leadership Academy, involving 12 employees and one volunteer; and four other cases that have resulted in criminal charges, involving two high school teachers, a JROTC instructor and an elementary school teacher.
