School custodian, an illegal alien, rapes freshman girl in Arizona high school

A custodian at Scottsdale, Arizona high school, who is an illegal immigrant from Mexico, stands accused of raping a 14-year-old girl on the school campus.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, say the paperwork that Roberto Lemus-Retana provided to the company that contracts with the school district was counterfeit. The school district says it wasn’t aware that Lemus-Retana was an illegal immigrant.

Since the rape, the school district has run its own background check on Lemus-Retana’s Social Security number, and asked Scottsdale police to do the same, but neither the district’s nor the police’s background check indicated he was in the country illegally.

Lemus-Retana was hired by sub-contractor ABM July 31, said the firm’s, vice president of safety and risk management for ABM.

“Anyone can go into a swap market and get certified documents, he added. “Someone gave him a Social Security number, loaned him one, he made one up or he went to the flea market and bought one.”

Lemus-Retana was charged in late August with seven felony counts of sexual assault-related offenses with a minor and was being held without bail in the county jail in Phoenix.

He was arrested late on a Friday at Saguaro High School. Police said the arrest came after the freshman girl told them Lemus-Retana made unwanted advances to her in a locked bathroom and forced her to have sex in a computer classroom.

The illegal admitted to having sex with the girl, but said it was consensual and that she told him she was 17, according to a court document.

The incident, which has shaken students at the school, has caused district administrators to rethink security measures. Custodians are now required to work in pairs.

The same man had been arrested in another county on suspicion of driving under the influence in May, and supplied a driver’s license at the time. He was removed by U.S. Border Patrol agents four days later from that county’s jail to be returned to Mexico. The ICE spokesman could not confirm that Lemus-Retana left the United States.

He didn’t have a Social Security number and was not a U.S. citizen when he was arrested in May, and he shouldn’t have had a valid one when he was hired by ABM.

The school district became aware of the DUI arrest after the rape, but a misdemeanor DUI would not have prevented the man from working in the district.

The school district has already implemented new security measures at all of its high schools, including adjusting hours of security guards and administrators so they are on campus from 6:30 a.m. until 5:30 p.m., a spokesman said.

The district also is looking at additional lighting and video surveillance at the campuses, he added, however, the district probably won’t require construction workers on campus to go through background checks.