An assistant basketball coach at New Mexico schools tricked multiple girls into sending him nude and inappropriate photos on Snapchat and then blackmailed them, according to court documents.

Now, a lawsuit says problems at the school district went beyond that one coach.

Joshua Gregory Rico, 26, who formerly worked for the Pecos Independent School District, pleaded guilty on Dec 22 to five counts of coercion and enticement of minors, according to the US Attorney’s Office for the District of New Mexico.

Multiple school district staff members, including two other assistant coaches and a janitor, have been previously accused of sexual abuse of minors, according to a lawsuit filed against the school district in 2021.

The lawsuit says the negligence of school administrators allowed the misconduct to continue, creating an environment for Rico to prey on students.

Grady Barrens, president of the Pecos Independent School District Board of Education, declined McClatchy News’ request for comment.

Rico’s charges

Rico, who began working with the school district as an assistant boys basketball coach for both middle and high school students in 2018, created a fake profile on Snapchat with the name “Chris Lujan” and added an eighth-grade girl’s varsity basketball player on the app, according to the lawsuit.

Posing as a 15-year-old high school student from another town, Rico began messaging the girl, who was 14, every day and eventually asked her to send him naked photos of herself, the lawsuit says.

He later added her using another fake profile, demanded more naked pictures and threatened to send them to other people if she didn’t do what he said, according to the lawsuit. He also sent her nude photos of other girls, some of whom the victim recognized, the lawsuit says.

In an email to McClatchy News, a Snapchat spokesperson outlined protections the company has in place to protect minors.

The protections include:

- A default setting that teens on the app have to be friends before they can start communicating;

- Teens being barred from having a public profile;

- Restricting teens’ profiles from showing up in searches or as suggested friends unless if they have mutual friends in common.

The company also has a new “Family Center” feature that allows parents to see whom minors are friends with and whom they communicated with in the past seven days, the spokesperson said.

Snapchat also works with law enforcement and takes action to terminate accounts after reports of inappropriate contact between adults and minors, the spokesperson said.

In another case, Rico posted a naked photo of a girl on his Snapchat story, which is visible to other users, and tagged her username when she did not respond to his messages, the lawsuit says.

His victims included at least four girls between the ages of 14 and 16, according to the US Attorney’s Office. He is accused of coercing at least one of them into “engaging in sexual acts with him”.

In one case, he demanded that a girl perform oral sex on him while he recorded video, the lawsuit says, and then used a fake Snapchat profile to ask her to send him the video.

Rico was arrested in February 2020, according to KRQE.

Pecos is about 80 miles northeast of Albuquerque.

‘Pattern and practice of sexual abuse of students,’ lawsuit says

The lawsuit says that Pasco Independent School District administrators “did nothing to correct or abort the pattern and practice of sexual abuse of students” in the school district, “thus enabling and encouraging Rico that any misconduct would go unchecked.”

In 2017, a janitor, Louie Vigil, was arrested and charged with multiple counts related to “criminal sexual penetration of a minor,” who was a student in the school district and his relative, the lawsuit says.

Another assistant Pecos High School basketball coach, Dominick Baca, was sentenced to three years in prison in 2020 on charges related to the rapes of a 14-year-old and 17-year-old girl, according to the Santa Fe New Mexican.

At least two victims who came forward to report Baca’s conduct were “chastised, ridiculed and harassed by other students” to the point where they transferred schools, the lawsuit says.

“(Pecos Independent School District) failed to take appropriate remedial action to stop such behaviour,” the lawsuit says.

Two lawsuits filed on behalf of Baca’s two victims against the school district were settled in 2018 and 2019 for a total sum of around US$1.5mil , the lawsuit says.

An assistant basketball coach, Apolonio Blea, who worked at Pecos Middle School and Mora High School in Mora, New Mexico, was charged in May 2018 and accused of raping and stabbing a 14-year-old student at Mora High School, the lawsuit says.

The Pecos Independent School district, going back to the 2013-2014 school year, “had a pattern and practice of failing to properly investigate complaints of sexual abuse of students, failing to take appropriate disciplinary action against sexual predators, targeting or retaliating against individuals who reported sexual abuse allegations and failing to train (district) employees to recognise, prevent and intervene in matters of student sexual abuse,” the lawsuit says.

Attorneys for the defendants in the case - the Board of Education of the Pecos Independent School District, Rico, then-superintendent Fred Trujillo and then-principal of Pecos Middle School and athletic coordinator for the district Michael Lister - did not respond to requests for comment from McClatchy News.

The current superintendent of the school district, Debra Sena-Holton, did not respond to a request for comment.

Linda Hemphill, the attorney representing one of the victims who is named as the plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a statement she was “pleased” the US Attorney’s Office secured a guilty plea from Rico.

The lawsuit has been stayed pending the outcome of the criminal case, but Hemphill said she expects the stay will be lifted after a status conference in January.

“Given that Rico is the second assistant basketball coach in Pecos who has pled guilty to charges involving sexual abuse of minor school children, we are committed to pursuing justice for our client,” the statement says. “We also hope and expect that Pecos School officials will heed this wake up call and start taking their legal and moral obligation to protect innocent school children more seriously.”

Rico’s sentencing hearing has not yet been scheduled, according to the US Attorney’s Office. He will remain in custody until sentencing.

He faces up to life in prison and the requirement to register as a sex offender, the office said.

 - TNS