LAUDERHILL, Fla. – A Broward elementary school teacher was arrested again on Tuesday. His latest arrest came after police reopened a past investigation into a claim of lewd and lascivious conduct, following the 45-year-old’s initial arrest on the same charge last year.
Damian Jude Francis taught at the Endeavour Primary Learning Center in Lauderhill at the time of his first arrest in October 2022 on a charge of lewd and lascivious conduct. That charge stemmed from an allegation lodged that March.
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 the 2022 police report.
Police said he admitted to touching the student and said he “shouldn’t have been hugging or touching them.”
According to a new arrest report, Francis’ latest arrest stems from allegations first made before then, on Sept. 27, 2021.
A first-grade student claimed that three days prior, Francis had “called her over to come to his desk in the past where he touched her stomach underneath her shirt, rubbed her belly and sometimes rubs his hands across her private area.”
Francis claimed in an Oct. 21, 2021 interview that the girl, who was 6 at the time, had had a stomachache that day and thought she was “mad at him” because “he did not give her a hug that day,” the new report states.
The girl and her family moved out-of-state shortly after, stopped cooperating, and police closed the case, it states.
Then, soon after finding out about Francis’ October 2022 arrest, her mother contacted police and asked them to reopen the case, police said.
In a Nov. 22, 2022 interview, the girl told investigators that when she went to Francis’ desk to ask him a question, he started touching her on her legs, buttocks and stomach and held her, the report states.
The girl also said Francis touched her “pokie,” or vagina, with his finger and also touched her thigh and touched her “everywhere.”
In the report, a detective said the “strikingly similar” allegations were made by a girl “not associated with or known to (the other victim).”
After bonding out of jail following his first arrest, Francis denied committing any lewd acts.
He had been reassigned to “a position away from the school and students” after his first arrest, Broward school officials said at the time.
“This individual is no longer an employee of the District,” a district spokesperson said Wednesday. “His employment was terminated on December 13, 2022.”
Francis, who lives in Lake Worth, remained held in a Broward County jail Wednesday afternoon following his second arrest.
He was set to be released on his own recognizance as of Wednesday evening, but was waiting to get an ankle monitor. The court also ordered him to have no contact with any minors.