Ambiorix Rodriguez was 32 at the time of the assaults against a 12-year-old girl. He is now serving a jail sentence of 20 years to life
A woman who was repeatedly sexually abused by her school’s janitor has spoken out in harrowing detail about her ordeal.
The New Yorker, who was just 12 at the time of the assaults, believes the school system is to blame for the abuse she endured.
She was able to be absent from classes for long periods of time during the school day, while a school employee raped her in the building’s basement.
The woman from Brooklyn, who is now 20, told the New York Post how janitor Ambiorix Rodriguez managed to groom her for more than a year before being able to rape her upwards of 40 times and finally being caught.
The woman is now suing Rodriguez and the Department of Education in Manhattan Supreme Court believing the school has to accept some of the blame for what happened.
She claims that Rodriguez should have been never been given the job in the first place after being arrested in 2004 and 2007 for drug possession and also being caught drinking at work.
The nightmare began when she was alone in a school stairwell and on her way to class one day at Brooklyn’s Middle School of Marketing and Legal Studies in East Flatbush.
‘Why do you always look at me like that?’ Rodriguez asked her.
The janitor would lure the girl down into the school’s basement to his ‘pen’ where he would rape her on the couch. The den was dank, cold and had a leaky roof which can be clearly seen at the top of the picture
The girl, who came from a broken home, had no idea what the older man meant at the time and was confused. She had no idea how the comment would be the start of months of hellish sexual abuse at his hands.
The janitor, who was 32 at the time, would entice her to come to his private room in the basement of the school during class, lunchtime and even after hours.
‘He would just kind of pressure me to come down stairs, I would say, “No” and “No” and “No,” but it would still be him pressuring me. For months,’ she said.
She would go down to his ‘pen,’ a secluded, dank room with a steel gate at the door and a rotting hole in the ceiling.
There was a TV and a couch in the room. While they were down there, other schoolchildren could also be heard outside in the playground above.
Rodriguez would try and make the girl feel comfortable by telling her she could sit on the couch and watch TV. Eventually, the encounters resulted in painful sex sessions.
Rodriguez would wait outside class and even after school to try and secure more alone time with the girl where he could rape her and continue to sexually assault her
‘If somebody was paying attention, somewhere, to me, maybe this wouldn’t have happened,’ said the woman, who spoke to The Post on condition of anonymity.
‘Somebody somewhere was not doing their job, that allowed me to go missing for so much time during school hours,’ she said.
Occasionally, Rodriguez would refuse to let her leave fearing that someone might see her in a restricted area of the school.
The youngster had little idea what was going on. Her family never told her about sex and she had no idea what condoms were or whether Rodriguez used one.
‘I felt like if I did say something, it would be me getting in trouble,’ she said to the New York Post.
Eventually, after about five months of torture she came up with a plan and started skipping school, showing up late, or immersing herself near large groups of students to make it tougher for Rodriguez to get to her without someone noticing what he was doing.
But Rodriguqez had become obsessed with the pre-teen and hung around outside after-school activities to try and secure some alone time with her before she went home.
The harrowing assaults took place at Brooklyn’s Middle School of Marketing and Legal Studies in East Flatbush
Finally, the girl could take no more and feeling the ‘overwhelming stress’ of the abuse told a teacher while out on a school field trip in April 2011.
That same day, Rodriguez was finally caught and arrested for rape. He was convicted two years later in 2013 and sentenced to 20 years to life.
By the time of his trial, the girl had become a teenager and testified against him in court.
It was a painful experience for her as she was forced to retell the story over and over with her abuser sitting just a few feet away.
In a written confession Rodriguez claimed the girl had flirted with him.
‘How could a 12-year-old flirt with you?’ The now adult victim fumed to the Post.
Seven years since the man’s capture, the woman feels relief that she has undoubtedly prevented other young girls from being abuse but feels immense regret that she didn’t speak up sooner.
‘The teachers should have done their job,’ she said. ‘I felt like, at 13, I didn’t have my own voice.’ she said.
She still feels incredulity that school staff never noticed what was going on. Her frequent disappearances from class and her being found in restricted areas never seemed to raise suspicions with the people who should have cared the most.
She is now suing the school system and the adults who failed her in an effort to make her voice heard.