Boy alleges he was sexually assaulted by teacher

By Jean Reid Norman

Tuesday, April 21, 2009 | 2:10 a.m.

A woman who says her son was a victim of Charles Richard Rogers, the Boulder City teacher arrested on charges of child sexual assault and possession of child pornography, wishes she had been more suspicious when Rogers lavished attention on her son.

The boy, who is now 14, told his mother recently that he was sexually assaulted by Rogers, most recently a science teacher at Garrett Junior High School, during sleepovers at his teacher’s house starting when he was 10 years old.

The mother and her son, who now live in Indiana, are scheduled to travel to Boulder City this week for an interview with police detectives.

She already has supplied police with photos of her son but has not been told whether he appears on any of the videos police say they found in Rogers’ home. Police said they could not yet confirm whether the boy is one of the alleged victims.

“I thought like everybody else that he was just a nice guy,” said the woman, who asked that her name not be used to protect her son’s identity. “Like everybody else, I didn’t see it.”

Some of the evidence against Rogers will be presented during a preliminary hearing, which was postponed from Tuesday in Boulder City Justice Court until May. Judge Victor Miller will decide whether there is enough evidence to send the case to District Court for trial.

Rogers, 46, is being held in the Clark County Detention Center in lieu of $1.3 million bail. He is charged with two counts of sexual assault with a minor, three counts each of lewdness with a minor and use of children in pornography, and 64 counts of possession of child pornography.

The boy met Rogers when he was in his fourth-grade class at Robert Taylor Elementary School in Henderson, the woman said. She had recently been divorced, and her son became friends with Rogers’ foster child. Over the next three and a half years, she said, her son spent nights at Rogers’ house, and Rogers bought him new clothes and toys and took him on a ski trip to Utah.

When the child’s grandparents became suspicious about all of the attention, the mother asked her son about it, she said.

“I said, ‘Look me in the face and tell me nothing is going on,’” she said. “He said, ‘Nothing is going on.’ I trusted that.”

But recently, when news reports of Rogers’ arrest reached the woman in Indiana, she asked the boy again, and this time the answer was different.

“I pulled him in a room and said, ‘I just need to know. I won’t feel any different,’” she said. “It was probably one of the hardest moments I ever went through in my life.”

She said she got the day off work and she and her son went to a restaurant, where they talked about it.

“He said it started with the sleepovers,” she said. “I said, ‘Why didn’t you make up excuses not to go over there? He said it didn’t happen every time, and in the times it wasn’t happening, Mr. Rogers was doing anything to make him smile, anything to make him laugh. He needed that attention.”

The boy’s grandparents said they went to school officials and Boulder City police in fall 2005 trying to get someone to investigate their suspicions. They thought the attention Rogers was giving their grandson was inappropriate.

They said school officials dismissed their concerns and police did not take a report. Police Chief Thomas Finn, who was not with the department at the time, said he planned to investigate what happened with the grandparents’ complaint and ensure any similar complaints are properly handled in the future.

The boy at one point told his grandfather that things went on with Rogers that he was not comfortable with, but when the grandfather pressed him for more information, the boy clammed up, the grandfather said.

They took their concerns to school Principal Janet Dobry, who dismissed them, they said.

“When we complained to the principal and gave her the information, she said, ‘No, we have no concerns there,’” the grandmother said.

Dobry said the Clark County School District has instructed her not to talk about the case.

A School District spokeswoman would not answer questions but noted a policy that outlines actions to be taken in the case of a complaint about a teacher. It includes a complaint form to be filled out if the situation is not resolved informally.

The grandparents said they were only recently given a copy of that form to fill out.

“There is nothing on file. No record that I ever contacted them,” the grandmother said. “Who do you turn to? It’s really frustrating.”

Boulder City Police officials say other parents also have come to the department saying they tried to bring suspicions about Rogers’ actions to the attention of the School District without success. Police would not provide details.

The boy’s mother said she noticed changes in her son’s behavior and his grades, but assumed they were because of her divorce and struggles to support the family.

He “was a straight-A student, but then his grades all dropped. Since the sixth grade, he has had no respect for his teachers. At the time, I was blaming myself,” she said. “Now, when I look back, it was all about this time when his attitude changed.”

Now her son is getting counseling and his attitude is improving, she said.

“Since this all came out, it’s like a big burden lifted off him,” she said. “He’s talking nicer to us, not getting into as much trouble. You can tell he feels better about himself now. He’s not ashamed, not hiding this horrible secret.”