19 county school employees charged in sex cases in 3 years

Wednesday, June 30, 2004 | 11:12 a.m.

Clark County has had its share of teachers and other school employees facing charges of abusing their students.

In Clark County, 19 school district employees have been arrested in the past three years and charged with sex-related offenses ranging from possession of child pornography to molestation and rape. The school district has 268,000 students and 30,600 employees.

None of those employees arrested had criminal records at the time they were hired, George Ann Rice, associate superintendent of human resources of the district, has said.

Three employees were arrested within the past two weeks, including a substitute teacher, a school custodian and a teacher's assistant.

The substitute teacher, Cornelius Ausborne, 29, was arrested June 14 after a 14-year-old girl told Clark County School District Police that she had met him at a Grant Sawyer Middle School classroom to have sex last month.

Ausborne has admitted to fondling the 14-year-old in his classroom and having sexual intercourse with another 13-year-old girl at her home, according to the police report.

Ausborne was charged with two counts of sexual assault of a minor 14 or under, sexual misconduct with a student and related offenses.

A week later, Coronado High School custodian Nephye Acevedo-Villatoro, 26, was arrested on charges of exposing himself to a 13-year-old girl.

The girl identified Acevedo-Villatoro as the man who had tried to lure her into his vehicle in a June 2 incident as she was walking near Swainston Middle School in North Las Vegas, police said.

Marlene Hazel, 32, a teacher's assistant at Gordon McCaw Elementary School in Henderson, has also recently been accused of having sex with a 14-year-old neighbor. The boy alleged that the woman had sex with him in his home while his parents were out of town in May, according to a police report.

All of these employees were immediately suspended and dismissal procedures were invoked against them, Rice said.

Local officials, including Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., have criticized in recent months the FBI system that allows school districts to do background checks. Several states, including Texas and California, do not share data with the national system, allowing potential abusers to secure jobs in other states.