DOJ fines Dallas ISD $1M over child abuse claims | FULL

Good morning. Thank you all for being here. I'm Ryan Rabel. I'm the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas. Today, we're announcing a $1 million settlement with Dallas Independent School Districts to resolve the federal government's civil claims related to the district's compliance with state reporting laws and its federal special education grant, and that was from 2022 to 2024. This matter centers on the district's handling of multiple allegations of educator misconduct involving former special education teacher Michael Rowell, also known as Jonathan Mitchell or Jonathan Michael. This was the Forney ISD teacher that we charged with crimes. Last month, our office secured a federal grand jury indictment against him as well as Principal Wendy Bailey related to concealing his history of sexual abuse. That case raises a critical question. How did someone like Rowell, a predator with multiple allegations of sexual misconduct and abuse of minors, particularly special needs kids, continue hopping from school to school with a valid certification, a clean record, and nothing on the statewide do not hire registry? Today, we address that question. Before teaching in Forney ISD, Rowell taught special education at Dallas ISD. Over three years, the district launched four separate investigations into misconduct by Rowell involving minors and his abuse of minors. Not one, not two, not three, but four. But not one report was made by DISD to the state of Texas. Despite those allegations, and despite explicit reporting requirements under Texas law, Rowell left Dallas ISD in May of 2024, carrying no public record of misconduct and no designation of alert to future school districts that he was a predator. Of course, he taught again, and this failure by DISD led to more child abuse, as we saw in the Forney case. This settlement reveals how that happened, it underscores why it matters, and it mandates why this must change. Dallas ISD, to its credit, accepted responsibility for this, but we need to walk through some of these allegations. It received a federal special education funding grant for Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. That's money that's meant to protect and support the most vulnerable kids in our schools. That funding carried annual certifications. The district certified that it would comply with state law, including mandatory reporting requirements, as well as other hiring requirements. Dallas ISD, our allegation is that they falsely certified that they would make the requisite reports to the state board for educator. They were required to do so under the law. They were required to report, quote, evidence of misconduct within seven business days following a resignation or termination for covered conduct. Evidence, not proof, not a formal finding, evidence. We had four examples of child abuse, four. And I want to take a moment to read just one to you because DISD did not find this to rise to the level of evidence. This is on page three of the settlement agreement, and I would invite all of you to take a copy and read it from front to back. So this was a complainant who came to the school on September 18th, 2023, and reported as follows. Rowell sexually abused him, this individual, at a Boy Scout camp in Athens, Texas, by touching his genitals. The complainant further alleged that Rowell had selected him because, in the complainant's opinion, Rowell believed the minor would not disclose the conduct. That sounds eerily familiar to the conduct that we charged Rowell with in Forney. He targeted a special education kid because he could not talk. The complainant also alleged that Rowell had touched other boys while serving as a Boy Scout leader. Okay, that's one allegation. There were three others, and DISD did not find that that was evidence. That's why we're here. There were other allegations. A mother reported that Rowell had touched her son and other students. Some administrators in the school district ordered Rowell to stop changing special education students alone because they were concerned about the safety of the students. These administrators raised the issue up the chain, they moved Rowell to a different setting, but no formal investigation, nothing happened. This was the evidence that DISD judged insufficient. Now I'm a lawyer, and I have to spend my time proving cases beyond a reasonable doubt and a preponderance of the evidence. When you get four serious allegations, it's pretty darn good evidence. Dallas ISD isolated each allegation, probably over-lawyered it, refusing to view these things collectively. They looked at them with a soda straw and not looking at the big picture to protect kids. The district repeatedly relied on its Title IX process, which demands proof under a preponderance of the evidence standard. Texas law, however, poses a very different question, and I cannot emphasize enough. Is there evidence? Evidence existed, it's very evident that was the case, and any assertion by DISD or anyone else defies reality. When accountability for Rowell became unavoidable after the fourth allegation, the district offered him a choice, resign or be terminated. He resigned, and that distinction matters. Termination requires the board of trustees to review and vote on it. There is a public agenda, a public vote, and a public record. A resignation merely sits in a file. Rowell departed silently, uneventfully, invisible to every school district that subsequently hired him, including Forney ISD. Remarkably, Dallas ISD placed him on its internal do-not-hire list, a list that was accessible to only Dallas Independent School District. So DISD knew he was a problem, but they let him walk out the door to potentially prey on other students. Now, of course, this protected DISD at the time, at least they thought. But this is the textbook definition of pass the trash and what we're trying to stop here in North Texas. And let me be clear. This is not a problem just in North Texas or just in Texas. This is a problem across the country. And credit to our state and the leadership in our state to try to deal with this problem because we are leading the way to put sunshine on a huge, huge problem that's happening in Texas but it impacts the rest of the country. And I hope other states follow suit. But Texas has established a statewide registry now to prevent any single district from hiding a problem educator, from sweeping it under the rug. Another problem was improper vetting and information silos, which I mentioned a moment ago. This is another critical DISD failure, and you can see some of them over there to the left. While teaching elementary school there, Rowell faced accusations of touching at least one student in the private part and observing students in the restroom. As we know, Garland ISD terminated him for that. Dallas ISD knew this and hired him anyway. This settlement ends this hiring gamesmanship. DISD must now mandate that every employee contractor and volunteer disclose all findings civil or otherwise against them background checks must now encompass pending or settled civil cases precisely where many allegations quietly vanish the district also withheld critical information from key administrators in 2023 as Dallas ISD investigated serious allegations against Rowell It interviewed the principal and assistant principal at Peeler Elementary, yet never revealed those accusations to the people that were charged with supervising Rowell. That cannot happen again. This agreement compels Dallas Independent School District to dismantle internal silos and guarantee staff responsibility for student safety that they receive the essential information to protect kids. Another problem was failure to involve law enforcement. Dallas police, they're some of the best in the business. They need to be investigating this misconduct, and the settlement agreement requires that. When the Boy Scout abuse allegations surfaced, the district referred it to its own police force, which disclaimed jurisdiction and internally rerouted the matter. But school districts should not be charged with investigating child abuse. That is why it needs to go outside the reporting structures of the superintendents and get to our great police chiefs, as well as our Texas Rangers, the HSI agents I have up here with me, and FBI, who do a fantastic job. It has to get out of that reporting structure. And so this settlement agreement establishes that process. Project Safe Schools is a national, we hope it's a national initiative one day, but it includes this provision in every settlement to strengthen student safety systems and prevent educator misconduct failures nationwide. These systematic failures compelled this office to launch Project Safe Schools to ensure every North Texas student's protection from educator misconduct, to compel district compliance, to make the requisite reports, and to correct oversight failures before another child suffers harm. Through Project Safe Schools, we strengthen reporting pipelines, guarantee law enforcement coordination and involvement early on. It's a report-first state, not an investigate, talk to your lawyer, try to sweep it under the rug state. You report it immediately and hold institutions accountable when they fail to protect students. This settlement does exactly that. Dallas Independent School District will pay $1 million and implement sweeping compliance reform measures over the course of three years. These reforms include mandatory training, standardized reporting tools, law enforcement coordination with these guys and the Rangers, and DPD, and district-wide safety protocols. These steps will help transform Dallas Independent School District's culture, making student safety non-negotiable, non-discretionary, and free from processes never intended to supersede state law. I'd like to thank Dallas Independent School District for engaging with us and agreeing to implement these changes that will better protect children in our schools. But this is only the beginning. To every district in North Texas, I say it is long past time to review your reporting practices. Every district has received the letter from me, from my office, demanding immediate action on this front. And the letter is over here to the right. I actually sent this to all the school districts in North Texas, putting them on notice that to go through their files the last five years and find instances where abuse happened and they failed to report it. Come to us. Send an email to our email inbox here. Call our hotline number. Call the FBI or HSI. make the requisite report and we'll work with you to improve the culture but that letter has been certified and sent to all the school districts in north texas so i encourage them to disclose immediately act rightly for north texas children your proactive disclosure will be weighed under DOJ guidance and you can yield a vastly different outcome than discovery through enforcement by these guys protecting students is not merely the law it is our shared collective responsibility. Through this agreement, Project Safe Schools and Relentless Oversight, we will ensure we meet that responsibility. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to anyone who has any questions. Yes, sir. Who are you with? Thanks. Absolutely. Yeah, we have so many investigations going on. And you know what's interesting to me is I ask folks to self-disclose and we will work with them. But you know what's happening? Parents are coming forward. Teachers that see bad things are coming forward. You know what's not happening? Superintendents continue to not report it. So I think they think this is going to go away. I think they think that we're going to do a couple settlements and just call it a day. But we have many, many investigations ongoing, some of which they have no idea. So I'm compelling independent school districts across North Texas to self-report their misconduct. We know they've done it. TEA has a dashboard that has well over 10,000 incidents. Javon Porter up here and my team is actively investigating this stuff. FBI, HSI are the best in the business working with DPD and DPS. We're all singing from the same hymnal on this. And so we've gotten zero reports. But the great thing is parents see that this is working and it's empowering them. And so, again, I would compel any school district to come forward and tell us what has happened in the last five years regarding child abuse that you did not report or hiring someone that you knew had problems. So we did charge Roel, the abuser, and I'm not going to get into what we may or may not do on a future investigation that may or may not exist. But what I can say, it's a good point, and I think it's a point that's well taken, is that you can't set up information silos and claim lack of knowledge. It's like a corporation. You can't set up a corporation, do something bad, and say, well, the CEO wasn't aware of it. The problem was that we had many different investigations ongoing, and there was information silos, and certain people knew some information, others didn't know other pieces of information. But when you look at the totality of it, which is imputed to the school district and the superintendent, the fact is this guy had four serious allegations. One of those has evidence in my book. I'd be happy to take that to a jury. And not once did they break those barriers down and say, hey, we need to raise the flag here and tell the state of Texas, the SEBC, and make the requisite report, which was required under the law. So it's just, and to Dallas' credit, they're breaking that down so that they're funneling up to the superintendent and board, which is what it should happen. And it should be a report first, investigate later. So make the requisite report, get Dallas police, get our DPS involved. That's changed now. And that's not just at the superintendent level. That's at every administrator level. They all have an obligation, thanks to the Texas legislature and our governor, that's requiring mandatory reports within 24 to 48 hours. Yes, they can, and I'm not going to get into processes and what we may or may not be doing. But, again, I would encourage if folks feel like they did something wrong, I'd encourage them to come forward and fall on the sword. Five years, yeah. And here's the thing. There's the statute of limitations. If a new superintendent comes in and sees a problem, he or she can be the hero and report the previous misdeeds of the previous superintendent or board or whomever. And so it's actually just good, good corporate policing or good superintendent policing to see a problem, fix the problem, come to the Department of Justice, enter into a settlement agreement and change the culture. You can be viewed as a hero. Instead, you're now going to be aiding and abetting the conduct when you know about it, bury your head in the sand and hope that Antoine or Chris or Javen doesn't find you. So 99.9% of teachers and administrators are wonderful people. It's the same thing with policing. I love police. But with teachers, there are certain subsets that don't do the right thing. But the bigger problem is how do you deal with that? And we saw this with Penn State, we saw this with USA Gymnastics, a culture of sweeping under the rug cannot happen. When you have a problem internally, the solution is to deal with the problem, highlight the problem, and improve the institution. And I do think that in Texas, from my vantage point in talking with police chiefs and our special agents in charge across Texas, they do believe there's a culture problem with sweeping things under the rug. That's not to say that every school district's like that. In fact, most are great institutions that educate kids and they go off to do great things for our society. But one of these is a problem. And so I'm just trying to push the deterrence message and change the culture for those folks that are thinking about civil liability from angry parents, rightly so. They need to just take a step back and do the right thing and just let the civil liability be where it is, which is like if you do this in the past and you're aware of it, you open yourself up to a lot of lawsuits. And that's just what it is. It's the same thing that the Catholic Church went through, USA Gymnastics. The culture has to change with some of these school districts. And I appreciate that DISD has taken the step forward because they settled with us. They recognize there's a problem, and they're trying to address it. Forney did the same thing. But, you know, Silas's question, we have a number of investigations ongoing, and these people did not come forward. This is a million-dollar settlement. Now, most of that money is going to go to help improving protections for students inside the school. So it's going to stay in the schools. There is a fine associated with that, about $150,000, but most of the money is going to be used to improve school safety measures and protections for kids. When you talk about multiple investigations, what are you talking about? Let me just say it this way. We will not stop. I mean, as long as I'm in this chair for two and a half years, this is one of the most important things to this office. General Blanch is completely behind it. He's giving me the support that I need to do my job. So we have the best agents here in North Texas. So I can say we have a lot, and more is coming in every day. I just sent all these letters out, so I hope that, and actually here's a box of certified letters that we sent out this week to these educators, the superintendents, and the board presidents to let them know that they're on notice, direct notice from me that they need to come forward with things that have happened in the last five years. those are great questions for Dallas Independent School district i don't know i know one of them was a was an individual who was a Boy Scout back in 2000 to 2004 and felt compelled to try to protect to his credit other students and saw a problem and made the report which is heroic and DISD did not find that to be enough evidence i would be pretty darn comfortable going in front of a jury sponsoring that guy's testimony. All right. Well, thank you guys for being here. I appreciate your attention.