LAUDERHILL, Fla. – Police officers arrested a Broward County Public Schools first-grade teacher on Monday in Lauderhill for lewd and lascivious conduct, and he had been under investigation before.
Broward County Circuit Judge Phoebee R. Francois identified the teacher during a bond hearing Tuesday as Damian Francis, 44, and the victim in the case as a 6-year-old student.
A spokesperson for BCPS later released a statement saying the school district was aware of Francis’s arrest and announced he was being reassigned to “a position away from the school and students.”
This isn’t the first time that happens to Francis, a teacher at Endeavour Primary Learning Center in Lauderhill, according to a complaint affidavit signed by Detective Tarra Walker, of the Lauderhill Police Department.
In May, Marissa Dukes, the assistant principal at Endeavour Primary Learning Center, told Walker that Francis had already been removed from his class and the school over another student’s report.
“After that investigation was closed, Francis returned to school in January after being out for two to three months,” Walker wrote in the May 27 complaint affidavit.
Investigators with child protective services and Broward schools’ special investigations unit looked into Francis’s alleged behavior with students. Walker named CPIS Investigator Jeannette Randolph and SIU Detective Thomas Honan.
On March 2, a mother reported her daughter told her that she no longer wanted to wear a skirt or a dress to school because Francis “rubs on her leg when she does and she does not like it,” according to Walker’s report.
“He was doing something weird to me,” the girl told a crisis unit case coordinator at the sexual assault treatment center on March 15, according to Walker.
During questioning on March 24, Francis admitted to touching a girl on her stomach, according to Walker.
“I shouldn’t have been hugging or touching them,” Francis told Walker about two girls in his class, according to the report.
Francis, who was born in St. Vincent and The Grenadines, had been working at the Endeavour Primary Learning Center for about seven years in May, according to Walker.
Francois set Francis’s bond at $65,000 on Tuesday. After learning about Francis’s record, parent Debbie Hudspetch was outraged and said the school district needs to permanently remove Francis from the school.
“He should be dismissed,” said Hudspetch, whose child is a student at the Endeavour Primary Learning Center.
Detectives were asking anyone with information about the case to call Broward County Crime Stoppers at 954-493-8477.