Hoover Assistant Principal Arrested For Child Pornography Was Accused Of Sexually Harassing A Student Years Earlier

By Jakob McWhinney, the Voice of San Diego

June 21, 2024

On March 20, the San Diego Police Department arrested Hoover High’s Associate Principal Charles De Freitas. In a complaint, prosecutors alleged De Freitas possessed child pornography, sent pornography to a minor and contacted a minor with “intent to commit a sexual offense.” De Freitas has since pled not guilty.

A report submitted by Hoover’s Principal Tracey Makings sheds more light on the allegations. In it, she wrote, “A student (the girlfriend of the victim) reported that Mr. De Freitas was recording inappropriate videos of himself in his office and sending them to her boyfriend [who was also a student].”

“It was reported that there may be other potential victims,” she added.

The news came as a shock to many within the district. But maybe not to all. It was not the first hint De Freitas had behaved inappropriately with students.

Nearly two years to the day before his arrest, Superintendent Lamont Jackson received a complaint from a parent that De Freitas had sexually harassed and potentially groomed their child, according to documents recently obtained by Voice of San Diego. This complaint came when De Freitas was a teacher at a San Diego Unified’s School of Creative and Performing Arts.

The allegations didn’t seem to hurt his career. A few months later, De Freitas was promoted to associate principal at Hoover.

There, he built boundary-blurring relationships with children, students claim, speaking frequently about sexual topics. The promotion put De Freitas in a position with more power where he allegedly committed crimes against children the district is meant to protect.

After his arrest, students and staff of multiple schools where he worked submitted more than a half dozen additional complaints, the recently obtained documents show. The case is yet another in a long line of examples of teachers who engaged in misconduct when warning signs had been there for years.

Two years before De Freitas’ arrest, a parent of a child attending San Diego Unified’s School for Creative and Performing Arts submitted a complaint directly to Superintendent Lamont Jackson. At the time, De Freitas was a math teacher at the school.

“It has come to my attention that my child … who attends SDSCPA, has been subject to inappropriate comments from their math teacher Mr. Charles De Freitas. I believe this deserves an investigation, it appears that he has been grooming my child from the beginning of the school year,” the parent wrote in an email on March 2, 2022. “Please let me know what can be done.”

When contacted for details, the student alleged De Freitas frequently made sexually suggestive jokes and comments. They said he had referred to them as “a gay little fairy thing,” and only complimented their outfits when they wore revealing clothing like short skirts or shorts.

The student also reported that a friend in another one of De Freitas’ classes “drew a woman who was slim and very curvy with larger breasts.” When he saw the picture, De Freitas purportedly turned to a student who often dressed in baggy clothing and said “this is how I imagine your body to be like under all that.”

Several employees within the district communicated about the complaint, emailing the student’s parent and each other repeatedly over the following days. In an email to the student’s parent, Christian Gordon, SCPA’s assistant principal, inquired whether they wanted to move forward with a complaint against De Freitas.

“You mentioned that perhaps you may have ‘over reacted’ in the moments after hearing the report from your student. We agreed that I would follow up with you on Monday (3/7) morning to gauge whether a ‘next step’ would be necessary,” Gordon wrote.

District staff told Gordon he needed to file a report with Child Protective Services. Gordon wondered if he should wait. He asked if he should file the report immediately “even though parent would like time to reconsider the allegation.” A report of the incident suggests the district did contact child protective services but does not specify when.

In emails from later that day, Lynn Ryan, the Title IX Coordinator advised that verbal sexual harassment “does not rise to the level of a Title IX complaint under the current regulations.” Title IX is a federal education statute that guards against sex-based discrimination in schools.

She also disputed the grooming description the parent offered, writing that “Based on the comments they provided, while certainly objectively offensive and repeated, does not seem to be along the lines of grooming.” That could change, she said, if something “more egregious,” was uncovered in the school’s investigation.

In any case, she notified staff that the parent and student could file a uniform complaint with the district and included a link to the district’s policies on “professional boundaries with students,” which she said could help the school determine appropriate disciplinary action.

Though emails show the parents decided they did want to move forward with an investigation, it’s unclear if they ended up filing a uniform complaint.

The emails are messy, but by March 14, a week and a half after the complaint, the investigation seems to have concluded. Gordon wrote in an email that day that the “investigation did not yield anything more ‘egregious’ than what’s outlined in the parent’s email or the student’s written statement.” Case files and emails only provide interview notes for three people, two students and De Freitas, who denied making some of the comments.

But, administrators added, “The days following complaint (the student) was laughing and having a good time.” The student’s “demeanor does not indicate anything is going on,” they added.

Officials do not seem to have disciplined De Freitas, according to a brief report about the incident. Instead, they marked the allegations against him as unfounded. Despite that, they moved the student to a different class, and ordered De Freitas not to have contact with them.

Ryan, the Title IX coordinator, tried multiple times to contact Gordon for updates and to officially wrap up the investigation. Gordon did not respond, leaving the case in administrative limbo for months.

Finally, administrators marked the case as closed in January 2023.

“The leadership team at SCPA began investigating the 2022 complaint immediately and followed protocols by communicating with both the district’s Title IX Coordinator and Quality Assurance Office. We continued our efforts for months through the complaint’s resolution,” Gordon wrote in an email.

On June 16, 2022 – just a few months after the investigation began – De Freitas was hired as Associate Principal at Hoover High.

In the days following his arrest, additional complaints about De Freitas trickled into San Diego Unified’s EthicsPoint platform – an online portal for submitting complaints. They came from staff and students at both Hoover and SCPA.

An employee at SCPA made a report that a student had “inappropriate boundaries” with De Freitas back in 2019. The student obsessed over De Freitas and had added him on social media platforms, the employee wrote. It’s unclear if the employee reported their concerns at the time.

One former SCPA student wrote in with similar concerns. “Many of my friends (particularly boys) would have his number and Discord account for ‘academic purposes,’” the student wrote. Discord is a popular communication platform. In the report submitted by Makings, Hoover’s principal, about the conduct that got De Freitas arrested, she writes that he sent and solicited “illicit images,” via social media apps like Instagram and communicated with students via Discord.

The Twitter account linked to De Freitas’ phone number also featured “very obscene photos and videos found on there and spread amongst the students,” the student wrote.

The student also reported that De Freitas invited students to dinner at his home or visited them at theirs.

The district’s previous investigation into De Freitas did not uncover these allegations. In response to a list of questions, District Spokesperson Maureen Magee wrote in an email “The district is precluded from disclosing the details of personnel matters.”

Many of the behaviors described in the students’ complaint are clear breaches of the district’s adult and student boundary policies. The policy states that any employee found to be in violation would face discipline up to and including firing.

Hoover students and staff submitted five complaints, which paint a picture of an administrator who routinely overstepped boundaries.

One student reported De Freitas would call his male students cute or say, “He has potential.” De Freitas would say “just use him for a one night stand,” “you guys are young, just have fun with them,” or use the phrase “fuck buddy,” the student wrote. Multiple students said De Freitas encouraged them to cheat on our significant others. “Because that is something he would do,” one student wrote.

Students said De Freitas alluded to watching pornography and would even speak to students about other teachers in a sexually charged manner, saying things like, “Damn, he has a nice ass.” His discussions with students weren’t limited to their own sex lives. In some instances, he spoke to them about his own.

“He would talk to me and my friend about all the men he had sexual relations with. Mr. De Freitas once showed me and my friend his Instagram explorer page that was filled with naked/shirtless men,” a student wrote in a complaint.

De Freitas also seemed to try to develop unusually close relationships with students. He would allow students to hang out in his office or to leave school to buy food, on occasion lending them his credit card to purchase things. All the while he seemed to feel immune to punishment.

De Freitas frequently tried to make plans to go to places like Wingstop with students without their parents’ consent, a student wrote. To the student’s knowledge these meetings never happened. But when asked if he would get in trouble, the complaint claims De Freitas said, “What is the school going to do, they can’t fire me.”

In the months since De Freitas pleaded not guilty, not much has happened. His case is slowly working its way through the courts. Makings, Hoover’s principal, has since announced her resignation, effective June 30.

After De Freitas’ arrest, one female Hoover student approached a staff member who submitted a complaint on her behalf. In it, the staff member wrote that a year prior, the female student had sex while intoxicated and was filmed nonconsensually by a male student. She hadn’t known she was filmed until the video began circulating amongst students during her fourth-period class.

The student approached De Freitas who said he would launch an investigation. Despite bringing the male student in, she said his devices were not checked and no investigation occurred. She was later approached by the male student and told “nothing was going to happen to him.”

The female student felt “scared/worried/concerned that no channels were pursued, and believes it was now in line with his proclivity for child based sexual materials,” the staff member wrote in the complaint.

To Billie-Jo Grant, the director of Stop Educator Sexual Abuse, Misconduct and Exploitation and a leading researcher in the field of teacher misconduct, De Freitas’ behavior has many of the hallmarks of grooming.

“Testing the waters for who’s going to engage with sexual comments, letting (students) go get lunch or buying them lunch, it’s all kind of blurring the boundaries between a teacher and a student … building that trust, so that they can possibly engage in further activities,” Grant said.

The fact that De Freitas’ behavior went largely unreported for years also is a major red flag to Grant.

“It’s either that they weren’t trained to (make complaints) or that there’s a culture of that if you say something, nothing’s going to happen,” she said. “So why should I even bother if they don’t do thorough investigations or take things seriously.”

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