Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Student Sues After Teacher Rapes Him in Classroom on Graduation Day

Starting point is 00:00:00 Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Former teacher Michelle Solis is serving time in prison for locking a teenage boy in her classroom and raping him on graduation day. Now that victim is suing Solis and the school district. His lawyer is here. Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm

Starting point is 00:00:25 Anjanette Levy. Michelle Solis is serving a four-year sentence in a California prison for having sex with a 14-year-old boy. The boy was one of Solis' students at Sycamore Middle School in Gridley, California. His lawyer will join me with details about this lawsuit that they filed against Solis and the school district in just a bit. The assault happened back in June of 2021. Solis and the boy were 29 years apart in age. The DA says Solis, a wife and mother of two, started following the boy on Instagram in the weeks leading up to graduation. DA Mike Ramsey told me last summer, after Solis was sentenced, that the boy liked the attention he was receiving from Solis at first. But then on graduation day, Solis committed the ultimate act of betrayal. The 14-year-old boy was brought into her classroom at Sycamore Middle School.

Starting point is 00:01:16 Solis locked the door and forced herself on him. The grooming had started with messages, and then she sent him explicit photos of herself, four to be exact. Here's DA Mike Ramsey. This was particularly, well, in a sense, disgusting by virtue of the fact that this 14 year old boy was just sucked into this situation by this teacher that obviously was sending Instagram and Snapchat, uh, kind of flirtatious activity over the, over the phone, over the social media and then, uh, photos, uh, and then eventually into the classroom on his, the morning of his eighth grade graduation, brought him in, locked the door, and had sex with him.

Starting point is 00:02:09 And as he indicated, he was pretty shocked and confused and didn't know what was going on. He had felt that the attention that the teacher was giving him was good at the beginning. But then to suddenly get to this point really was for this boy. As he said later, he said he felt he had been raped. His friends noticed and his family noticed the entire change in his attitude. Police started investigating in October of 2023 and found messages between Solis and the teen.

Starting point is 00:02:49 Investigators discovered other disturbing information. That became apparent in our investigation that she had been warned at other times to not be down at the level of her students. She had been kind of chastised that she was acting too much like an eighth grader with her students, that she was doing social media. In fact, we had one indication from some of the girls in her class that she seemed to want them out of the class so she could be alone with the boys and act flirtatious with them. Now, the fact that Solis had been warned about being so friendly with students will likely be very important in this civil lawsuit that the victim has now filed. The suit claims sexual assault of a minor, negligent hiring, supervision

Starting point is 00:03:42 and or retention of Michelle Solis by district employees, and negligent supervision of plaintiff by district employees. The suit makes a number of claims, including that the district knew or had a reason to know that Solis was grooming male students. The suit says, Solis engaged in highly inappropriate behavior, including but not limited to spending time alone with minor male students, communicating with minor male students outside of school hours, sending inappropriate sexual text messages to minor male students, providing naked photos of herself to minor male students, and isolating minor male students in her classroom behind closed and or locked doors

Starting point is 00:04:22 during school hours. The suit also claims that Solis used her privileges and relationships with other school staff members to gain access to students. The suit states, during the 2020-2021 school year, Solis gave plaintiffs special attention, including spending time alone with him in her classroom after school under the guise of helping him with homework. Solis also had a district yard duty supervisor write passes for plaintiff to spend time in Solis's classroom alone during recess and lunch. During that school year, Solis sent inappropriate sexual photographs of herself to plaintiff. Cases like this one involving former teacher Michelle Solis go to show you just how important it is to make sure that the people your children are around are safe. Truthfinder.com can help you do that. Truthfinder is one of the largest public record search services. I searched for Michelle Solis and came up with old traffic citations for her for speeding.

Starting point is 00:05:23 Her criminal conviction for sex crimes involving the student is fairly new, so it's not on there yet, but it will be eventually. And what's really great about Truthfinder, it will show you the sex offenders who live in your neighborhood. It also shows you past addresses, possible relatives, and social media accounts for people that you search. So right now, I have a great deal for you. You can get 50% off of

Starting point is 00:05:45 confidential background reports. Just log on to www.truthfinder.com slash lccrimefix. Log on and start accessing information about almost anyone. Mark Boscovich represents the student in this case, and he has filed the lawsuit. Mark, thanks for coming on. First off, how is your client doing? He's taking it day by day. There's some who are worse than others. I think often, same with the experience of my client, but with many clients, it's a roller coaster. And depending on what you're doing and what you're involved in, it will affect where you are on that roller coaster, whether you're on a up or a down. What I can say is that over the course of this criminal trial and now the civil case, been a lot of sleepless nights for my client and feeling very isolated in this situation

Starting point is 00:06:39 because this is a small community and a lot of people were not on his side. And it was very difficult to even say his story during the extent of the criminal case because there are people giving him dirty looks and people flipping him off and just, I mean, just doing things that were completely uncalled for. This is not something he asked for. He anticipates he'll probably get these kind of responses again, but in the end, he wants to do the right thing and make sure that the district is held accountable for this. Why were people treating your client poorly? That's kind of shocking to me. I mean,

Starting point is 00:07:15 were they on the side of Michelle Solis or what was going on? That's our suspicions. We can't say for sure without getting into those people's minds. But I imagine a lot of people were siding with this lady. It could be they knew her. It could be they just don't believe in these kind of lawsuits or these kind of keys. It's unclear. But what is clear is there's a lot of animosity directed towards my client for telling his story. One thing that, you know, we've covered a lot of these cases here on this show. And one thing that really bothers me a lot as a mom and just as a, you know, a human being in general is the fact that, you know, there are these stereotypes that, oh, you know, it's a boy, so they probably liked it. And this is every, you know, teenage boy a boy, so they probably liked it, and this is every teenage boy's fantasy.

Starting point is 00:08:07 It's really not. It scars kids when these things happen. And at the time, your client was 14 years old. Michelle Solis, she's in prison now. She's serving time, so she's been convicted of this in a court of law. I mean, he was locked in a room with her and sexually assaulted. So talk to me about, you know, the emotional impact of this on your client and the fallacy about, you know, teenage boys thinking this is cool. Yeah, that fallacy absolutely does not apply here. And it probably doesn't apply in 99% of these cases. My client never actually told people about this till many years later. It wasn't like he was out there bragging about this sexual encounter with his teacher. It was thrusted upon him because the teacher ultimately, one of her

Starting point is 00:09:06 nude photographs was caught by an adult and she ultimately got arrested. And so that's what kind of brought him into this case. If he was so proud of this situation or happy about it, why didn't he talk about it earlier? Why didn't he discuss it? Because he wasn't. He was raped. He was put in a position where he didn't have that control. And that loss of control, that sits with him to this day, that he felt like this was a trusted adult. He had come to admire and trust this adult over the course of an entire school year. And the fact that that person would then use that trust to basically, to gratify her, you know, sexual desires is, you know, that's a real devastating feeling for him because he really liked this person leading up to this, trusted this person. I think that's part of the, that betrayal of trust

Starting point is 00:10:06 is one of the, I think the most devastating parts of this, of this case. And where is your client now? I don't want to be too specific because I'm trying my best to preserve his privacy, but what I'll tell you, he's a young adult and he's still in the community. So I'm sure he's still going to be hearing from people about this. So let's talk now about the lawsuit. You're basically saying that the Gridley Unified School District should have known better. I mean, she was doing things like texting students, talking with them on social media, things of that nature, things that teachers and students shouldn't be doing with one another. Yes.

Starting point is 00:10:48 And at some point, the administration, someone in the administration spoke with Ms. Solis about her being overly friendly with these eighth grade boys. People noticed that she was acting unusually close with the boys and doing inappropriate things. And she was warned and just continued this type of behavior. So, I mean, it wasn't that they didn't even see it. They did see some of it. They just chose to think it wasn't. I don't know exactly what they were thinking. I'm going to learn more about this in the course of the case. But in the end, they chose not to do much and she continued to

Starting point is 00:11:25 escalate her behavior. Obviously, we're very early on in this process. You've just filed the suit. You will get discovery. Have you been in touch though with the DA in this case? Have they been able to give you any information at all that might help you in this suit to uncover information about, you know, is there a smoking gun here with the school district? Like a record that shows, you know, they were aware that maybe she was doing more than, you know, texting or whatever. I haven't been in touch with the DA on this case, but I do have a lot of the police reports. I've been able to review those and they do share some information, but there's much to learn from this case. I think as we go through the discovery process, we're going to unveil a lot of that information.

Starting point is 00:12:17 And my hope is also with your coverage and the coverage of other media sources that others with information will come forward. Because it typically does. It takes one person, as you've probably noticed with the Sean Diddy Combs cases, you know, one person comes forward and then sometimes an avalanche of information will come out of that. It takes that one brave person to get it started. One thing that's pretty disturbing, the allegation in your suit or one of the allegations in your lawsuit is that Michelle Solis was getting people, you know, colleagues of hers to write passes for not only your client, but maybe other students to kind of hang out, spend lunch and recess with her or whatnot. So she was using other people to help her get access to your client. Talk to me about that aspect of this case. Well, what that fact suggests to me is that a lot of these teachers were uninformed about this particular issue. That brings to mind, okay, there's a lack of leadership here.

Starting point is 00:13:31 If you have strong leadership, you train and educate your employees on these kind of situations. This is a clear kind of red flag situation. A teacher trying to summon a student to spend one-on-one time. That should ring a bell in the mind of some of these people that are writing those passes. But for all we know, they had no idea. And you know, there is, and that falls on the leadership for the lack of training and education on this issue. At this time, we know how predators operate. There's a lot of literature on it. There's lots of great training. I just underwent a volunteer training myself and I had to volunteer for my kids' fair. And there's a lot of great material to educate

Starting point is 00:14:18 people on these situations. And when I see these kind of actions by teachers writing passes, my mind goes to, this person didn't know. She didn't know, or he didn't know. What is your client's ultimate goal here? I mean, you're filing a lawsuit. You'd probably like to force some change within the district. But obviously, you're filing a lawsuit. so he's seeking some type of monetary compensation. Yeah. So accountability will hopefully come in two forms here. One, you know, monetary and two, hopefully some change at this district. You know, hopefully there will be some education that comes from this or some training from this or some more additional protocols that come from this.

Starting point is 00:15:09 That's the hope. But in the end, we need to hold the district accountable for this. Otherwise, it will continue. And our civil justice system leaves us these kind of options. Mark Boscovich, thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate it. Well, thank you for covering the story. I really appreciate it. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Thanks so much for joining me. I appreciate it. Well, thank you for covering the story. I really appreciate it.

Starting point is 00:15:25 And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.

Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Student Sues After Teacher Rapes Him in Classroom on Graduation Day

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