John Austin Hopkins, 25-year-old gym teacher at Clearcreek Elementary School, was accused of 36 counts of gross sexual imposition with 28 first-grade female students in a class he taught.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hopkins is accused of inappropriate contact with potentially up to 88 girls during his time as a teacher at Clearcreek Elementary, which is in the Springboro school district. Though at this time he is only accused of 36 counts of third-degree felony with 28 young girls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The parents of 22 Springboro claim the school district failed to protect their children from Hopkins in a lawsuit filed Friday, Sept. 13.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The lawsuit alleged that Hopkins had installed an alarm on the classroom door, alerting him to when someone wanted access to the room. He also locked the door, as per the lawsuit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to the lawsuit:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWith knowledge of Springboro administration, including Schroer and Corder, Hopkins kept the door to the gymnasium locked during classes, which prevented access by Springboro personnel. With knowledge of Springboro administration, including Schroer and Corder, Hopkins installed a doorbell on the exterior of the gymnasium door to alert him when any Springboro personnel wanted to access the gymnasium.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to Scott Marshall, the district\u2019s communications coordinator, the gymnasium door was never locked, according to an email reported by the Dayton Daily News last week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe gymnasium did have a doorbell, however, it did not signal when people entered. Based on the investigation, and evaluation walk-throughs by administration, the gymnasium door was never locked during class time,\u201d said Marshall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The lawsuit further infers that the district, including former superintendent Daniel Schroer and the principal of Clearcreek Elementary Carrie Corder, knew of the locked door and holds them responsible as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The lawsuit also states that security cameras, installed and operated by the school caught Hopkins a total of 100 times making inappropriate contact with minors who were his students between Dec. 2018 and March 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe primary defendant is the school system, and then the former superintendent and then the principal. John Hopkins is mentioned last,\u201d Hopkins\u2019 criminal lawyer, David Chicarelli, said in a statement given to Dayton Daily last Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOther teachers\u2019 classrooms had a doorbell (not all), as classroom doors (not the gymnasium) are typically closed and locked during class,\u201d said Marshall in June.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last Monday, lawyer Angela Wallace filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education, stating that the school district was violating the rights of parents of students by not turning over the video surveillance of Hopkins alleged crimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe were able to identify 88 female first grade students who had some type of physical interaction with Mr. Hopkins,\u201d said prosecutor David Fornshell, in a statement reported to WHIO. \u201cHis focus definitely was on the little girls.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\t\u201cWe tried to reach a resolution informally with the school and were unable to do so,\u201d said Wallace in a statement reported to Dayton Daily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\tThe district didn\u2019t make a statement as of last Monday, citing \u201cpending litigation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\tThe lawsuit is brought on behalf of only 22 students, though it is proposed for \u201call female students in the Springboro Community City School District that were enrolled in the first grade at Clearcreek Elementary during the 2018-2019 school year and suffered sexual contact by John Austin Hopkins, and the guardian(s) of those students.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\tAccording to the lawsuit, the \u201cproposed class\u201d includes \u201cparents and natural guardians of female first-grade students that attended Clearcreek Elementary during the 2018-2019 school year, referred to collectively as child victims and individually as Child Victim A through L.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\tHopkins resigned back in March after serving as a full-time teacher for the school and as a long-term substitute reaching as far back as 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\tThe lawsuit states that \u201cdue to Hopkins\u2019 relationships with teachers and former administration of Springboro,\u201d Schroer recommended Hopkins be hired \u201cirrespective of his qualifications or background.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\tThe lawsuit also claims that \u201csome child victims were subjected to sexual contact by Hopkins before December 2018. These instances of sexual contact are believed to have been recorded by security cameras, but no video proof of those instances remain as Springboro purports to have destroyed all security camera footage recorded before December 2018.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\tAlso, according to the lawsuit, the school district is violating federal law by not releasing the footage of the instances of misconduct.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\tThe school\u2019s superintendent, Schroer, was placed on paid administrative leave on Aug. 16, and later resigning after an investigation involving \u201cfinancial allegations\u201d were brought against him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\tA spokesman for the district said that the resignation had nothing to do with the Hopkins case, at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\tHopkins remains free on house arrest for the time being, as evidence and its availability are sorted out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Richard Foltz<\/strong> John Austin Hopkins, 25-year-old gym teacher at Clearcreek Elementary School, was accused of 36 counts of gross sexual imposition with 28 first-grade female students in a class he taught. Hopkins is accused of inappropriate contact with potentially up to 88 girls during his time as a teacher at Clearcreek Elementary, which is in the Springboro […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10416,"featured_media":26466,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3522,2110],"tags":[3594,2877,3595],"class_list":["post-26463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dayton-news","category-local","tag-clearcreek","tag-richard-foltz","tag-springboro"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/clearcreek-sign-youtube-greyscale-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-6SP","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10416"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26463"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26532,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26463\/revisions\/26532"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Executive Editor<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"