What Happened in the 2023 Carlos Mendez Investigation?

This story is a follow-up to a story from February: Washington Elem. Assistant Principal Arrested for Child Sexual Abuse. In that story, I promised I would follow up on two stories:

An Epstein connection at Northwestern (in progress).
A follow-up on a 2023 suspension of the former Assistant Principal at Washington Elementary, accused of sex crimes against children and currently in court.

Stories like this are always hard to write — I ended up quitting last time. The reason is: the evidence is hearsay from K-5 students relayed through their adults, none of whom would go on the record. Even if I trust the source telling me the story, I do not trust the informational chain of custody of elementary school students. It’s an evidentiary game of telephone. Also, because minors are involved, most records are not available to journalists — so there’s no way to verify anything.

However, I think it is prudent to ask: “A bad thing happened involving children, how did the leadership react? Did they deliberately work to determine the truth and heal the situation? Or did they use the event to score petty political victories for themselves?”

2023 Mendez Suspension

Here’s the timeline of events:

February 23, 2023: According to emails, Mr. Mendez was at a school event, the Black Heritage Celebration. Sometime between this event and March 20, he was put on a remote work assignment while a DCFS investigation took place.
March 20, 2023: There was a Board Meeting where the school’s principal, parents, and Mr. Mendez spoke during public comment, in support of his return and suggesting the suspension was racially motivated.
March 22-27, 2023: Parents email the School Board and Dr. Horton with words of support for Mr. Mendez. Dr. Horton and the Board respond to every email (see below)
April 25, 2023: Washington Family Newsletter announces return of Mr. Mendez.

I reached out to the District who confirmed an investigation from DCFS occurred, and was resolved in April 2023:

It is the District’s understanding that, in 2023, a complaint was reported to the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services regarding Mr. Mendez. He was placed on a remote work assignment while DCFS conducted its independent investigation.
DCFS led the investigation and it is our understanding that former Superintendent Dr. Horton did not have any involvement. In regard to this particular complaint, the District received notification from DCFS in April 2023 that the investigation had concluded and that DCFS had cleared Mr. Mendez to return to work.

I obtained via FOIA a copy of the emails that the Board and Dr. Horton sent and received during this time. You can read the emails. I’ve added additional redactions in grey.

The emails tell the story of a Superintendent advocating on behalf of Mr. Mendez before the investigation had concluded:

March 22, 2023: Dr. Horton responds to a parent, "We truly appreciate your perspective and we are looking forward to moving forward in support of Mr. Mendez and the Washington Community!"
March 29, 2023: Dr. Horton forwarded the Washington Newsletter to the School Board, saying "Good morning School Board, I wanted to provide you with this email from Washington's PTA. We are still investigating and finding out other details that we need to put together. Please stay tuned!"
March 29, 2023: Dr. Horton responded to a parent email about Mr. Mendez saying, "Thank you for your support!"

His responses were sent almost a month before Mendez would be cleared by DCFS. After Mendez was put back to work, he personally thanked Dr. Horton:

The School Board, via board member Soo La Kim, replied to every single email of support on behalf of the board.

On behalf of the board, I want to acknowledge that we’ve received your letter of support. Thank you for reaching out to share your experiences with Mr. Mendez. We very much appreciate the input about his leadership and his impact on students and families.

Again, it wouldn’t be until a month later that DCFS cleared him.

What’s Next?

If the allegations against him are true, he fooled a lot of people. One parent wrote in the emails:

Carlos Mendez is a damn hero. He is the nicest human. He is constantly looking out for those kids … And anyone that says anything else is a moron.

Other parents chimed in at a March 20, 2023 board meeting, calling the suspension of Mendez, “racist oppression.” The school principal commented publicly, describing both the student and a parent.

I wanted to share my unconditional support for Carlos Mendez, my assistant principal, who has been put through an anonymous and sickening investigation prompted by a parent who's on a quest to have a black student who's having some social emotional needs expelled from District 65.

Again, this is almost a month before the DCFS investigation concluded. I have to wonder if DCFS got an honest assessment of the situation from District 65. We can never really know.

The District did it again on February 12th of this year when they announced that no District 65 students were impacted two days (!) before they received the report from DCFS. I’ve seen the disturbing Chicago Police arrest report — it is technically true, the report does not include any District 65 students. But sex crimes like this tend to have victims that don’t report until later. For this reason, in 2019, the State of Illinois eliminated the statute of limitations for these types of offenses.

This whole situation is frustrating — the role of DCFS is to determine findings in these types of situations. As I wrote earlier, it doesn’t even matter what the specific allegations were or whether racism was a factor — an administrator was accused of wrongdoing, he was put on paid leave, DCFS took up the case, and eventually cleared him. But the entire time, the folks in charge advocated for the accused.

Why can’t anyone just say, “we don’t know”?