Two leaders at school in Louisiana were arrested and charged of failing to report a video showing an underage student performing sexual acts five months ago.
Nicole Kusmirek, 32, and Shayla Shane, 27, were booked and released by police in New Orleans Tuesday on counts of possessing of child pornography and failure to report child abuse as required in their roles as school employees, The Times-Picayune reported.
Kusmirek is the middle co-director of K-8 at Success Preparatory Academy, while Shane is the middle academy’s director of culture.
New Orleans police detective Bianca Delrish was called to investigate an allegation of child abuse on April 27 involving a 13-year-old girl, according to the arrest affidavit for Kusmirek.
Delrish was told by a fellow officer that the girl’s mother called 911 to report that the child had been recorded ‘performing oral sex’. The mother also said the explicit footage was shared to Instagram.
Nicole Kusmirek (left), 32, and Shayla Shane (right), 27, were booked and released by police in New Orleans Tuesday on counts of possessing of child pornography and failure to report child abuse as required in their roles as school employees
The mother told Delrish that she received a call from the school on April 25 to report that her daughter was caught in a bathroom on campus with four boys.
The girl also gave her mother a letter about the incident that same night, according to the police.
The teen explained that she was going to meet a boy in the boys restroom when she noticed other boys inside the restroom and screamed ‘no’, according to the report.
But one of the boys pulled the girl inside and into a stall, the report states.
She was unable to escape because another boy had blocked the door and demanded that ‘you can’t leave until you give us all’ oral sex, the report states.
In the letter to her mother, the girl said she ‘succumbed to peer pressure’, and that she heard Kusmirek’s voice while ‘trying to get out of the stall’.
Kusmirek is the middle co-director of K-8 at Success Preparatory Academy (file above), while Shane is the middle academy’s director of culture. They are accused of failing to report a video showing a 13-year-old girl being forced to perform oral sex on three boys five months ago
The teen said she noticed one of the boys had filmed the incident on his phone.
On April 26, the girl’s mother went to the school to ask what happened, but no one at the school could provide accurate information’ according to the report.
The mother did learn that a male teacher had entered the restroom and witnessed the boys watching the video they filmed. That teacher confiscated the phone and reported the incident.
During the mother’s trip to the school on April 26, Shane was one of the officials who spoke with her.
The report states that Shane watched the video on the phone before emailing it to herself and sending it to Kusmirek in a text message.
Shane said that she deleted the video from the student’s phone before returning it to the student.
But the mother told cops that there are three to four videos ‘approximately’ of the shocking incident.
The girl was recorded on a boy’s cellphone during the incident and Shane (above) confiscated the phone. She watched it before emailing it t herself and sending it to Kusmirek in a text message. She claims she then deleted the clip from the student’s phone before returning it
Delrish learned later that Kusmirek did not immediately report the incident to police or the Department of Children and Family Services, according to the report.
She met with the school’s executive director, Niloy Gangopadhyay, who said Shane and Kusmirek had informed him about the situation.
He told cops that he watched the video on Kusmirek’s phone and that the parents of the boys involved were notified.
He also told cops the names of the boys in the restroom, but said that only three of them were involved in the sex acts, according to the report.
It is unclear whether any of the boys involved have been charged.
Gangopadhyay released a statement Wednesday and said Shane and Kusmiek ‘took appropriate action and protected the interests of our school and the safety of those students.’
‘At this time, we want the public to note that we stand behind our two team members and feel that there was no criminal intent or action on their part in the incident that involved former students,’ Gangopadhyay said.
Their attorney, Nandi Campbell, told the newspaper that Shane and Kusmirek were trying to prevent a child from taking the explicit video off campus.
Campbell added that Shane and Kusmirek wanted to keep the footage ‘just in case (and she assumes) the deletion and transfer of the video to their phones is what NOPD is characterizing as obstruction of justice,’ the newspaper reported.
The attorney said that the act of preserving the evidence on their cellphones is what the police are using to charge them with child pornography.
The two educators have since bonded out of jail and the case is now moving on to the District Attorney’s office.