Manassas teacher accused of being sexual predator

Editor's note: The original version of this story reported that Kevin Ricks had been a teacher at Hampton Roads Academy in Norfolk. The only school by that name is in Newport News.

Kevin Ricks was a gregarious, well-traveled English teacher at Manassas’ Osbourn High School, a Walt Whitman devotee who was so popular that a photo of him in class was chosen to fill the opening page of the yearbook. A writer and photographer himself, Ricks would walk the halls of the school with a leather-bound journal of his musings tucked in his bag, next to his laptop computer.

What teachers, parents, students and even his wife didn’t know was that his journals contained decades of dark secrets, a running handwritten commentary of Ricks’s world of obsession, infatuation, pursuit, sexual abuse and international child exploitation, according to investigators.

They didn’t know about his apparent library of homemade pornographic videos and explicit photographs that officials say capture his tequila-soaked sex acts with teenage boys he had handpicked. They didn’t know about the makeshift shrine boxes that police say contain mementos of the episodes, including sex toys, soiled tissues and hair trimmings.

Even some of the possible victims didn’t know they were victims.

A four-month Washington Post investigation of Ricks’ career as a teacher, tutor, foreign exchange host and camp counselor has revealed what appears to be a pattern of abuse that dates to at least 1978 and has left a trail of victims spanning the globe. But despite the abuse, Ricks moved from one teaching job to the next over nearly 30 years, navigating the nation’s public and private school systems undetected, evading traps designed to catch him.

He spent the 1982-83 school year teaching at Hampton Roads Academy.

In some cases, school officials and foreign exchange companies knew of or suspected Ricks’ inappropriate behavior and simply let him go, leaving the next employer with no idea what was coming.

His case underscores the difficulties that educators and parents face when they only suspect abuse but can’t prove it, and how reluctant even the most suspicious and well-meaning people can be in coming forward with allegations.

Interviews with six of Ricks’ possible victims or their families in Asia, Europe and the United States – along with several others who think they or their children were being groomed as victims – tell a story of a teacher who believed he was falling passionately in love with his students and the foreigners he brought into the country. They said he spent months infiltrating their lives, their families and their youth groups. He plied them with expensive gifts, trips, event tickets, attention and ultimately loads of alcohol.

When the boys were in a drunken stupor or asleep, Ricks would molest them, using a camcorder and camera to capture the graphic, secret sex acts, according to victims and law enforcement officials.

Police and prosecutors in Virginia and Maryland said their investigations have turned up alarming evidence of predation along with a hoard of child pornography and matching journal entries describing the abuse. A Manassas police detective and FBI agents are scouring his computers and journals and have been looking across three continents for evidence.

So far, he is charged in Prince William County with the sexual battery of one teenager. But the federal investigation and Post inquiry have turned up many other instances of possible abuse.

Teachers and school administrators in several jurisdictions said in interviews that Ricks came with recommendations and an unblemished record. Some said privately, however, that they had concerns about his closeness with students and rumors of possible abuse but felt powerless to do anything about it.

One school board on Maryland’s Eastern Shore let him go after allegations arose citing a contract technicality but later went so far as to ban him from school property. Ricks simply moved to another school district.

School systems said they couldn’t act because they lacked evidence, even after warnings surfaced that Ricks was trouble, or they didn’t dig deep enough to find proof. Ricks was hired for a teaching job in Manassas nine days before he was convicted of felony theft and served a weekend in jail in Maryland, a theft Manassas officials never knew about.

Ricks – universally described by those who know him as intelligent, friendly, generous and convincing – used those natural abilities to get close to the teenage boys around him and to groom them for his exploits, investigators say. He also became close to their friends and parents, they said, presenting himself as a caring teacher and mentor.

“He’s a predator,” said Amy Ashworth, a Prince William County assistant commonwealth’s attorney who handles crimes against children and is prosecuting Ricks in the abuse of a Manassas teen. “Predators are masters of manipulation. These people tend to be likable. They don’t set off alarm bells, and people think they are not a threat. But parents need to be suspicious of anyone who shows such an interest in their children.”

In more than three hours of conversation with a reporter in six telephone calls and a video conference in the Prince William County jail, Ricks declined to comment on the record, citing a court hearing scheduled for Thursday at which he is expected to plead guilty to one felony charge of indecent liberties with a minor under his supervision. But in a May 24 letter to a friend after his arrest, Ricks wrote: “I’m not innocent this time. I have crossed the line. I deserve to be here,” the friend said.

Facebook was Ricks’ undoing.

On a cold February morning, Manassas police received a call from concerned Osbourn parents. Their daughter had gained access to a friend’s Facebook account and stumbled upon a series of explicit messages between Ricks and her friend. The dialogue indicated sex between Ricks and the 16-year-old boy.

Detectives located the boy and his family and interviewed them. They learned that over winter break, while the teenager was staying with his father in Manassas, Ricks had gotten him drunk in the father’s basement and had performed sex acts on him, according to police and court documents.

Ricks had been living with the boy’s father for about a year, renting the basement room for $500 a month so he wouldn’t have to commute to his home in Federalsburg, Md., more than two hours away. The teen had been in Ricks’ English class at Osbourn but had since moved away to live with his mother, coming back to Manassas on weekends and vacations.

It was Thursday, Feb. 18, and Ricks was about to head to the Manassas home after school. Police intercepted him at Osbourn.

Ricks’ arrest prompted an immediate outpouring of student support, including nearly 200 who joined a new Facebook page trumpeting his innocence. He was charged with aggravated sexual battery, carnal knowledge and two counts of indecent liberties with a minor while in a supervisory role. A judge ordered him held without bond.

A search of Ricks’ home in Federalsburg uncovered a private space that police have dubbed “The Toy Room.” Hidden inside, detectives found what they think is the intricately documented history of a child predator at work over several decades.

Stacks and stacks of leather-bound journals included graphic accounts of the pursuit and ultimate sexual conquest of at least a dozen boys and perhaps many more, they say. They found homemade videos police say is of the abuse as it occurred in locations across the country and photographs of teenagers in various states of undress.

“It was the most evidence I’ve ever seen,” said Federalsburg Police Chief Donald R. Nagel, describing as “sickening” the bags and bags of materials that were taken from the home in four carloads. “He documented everything, all describing relationships with boys. He was a very intelligent predator. He was a pro at how he accomplished what he accomplished. I think there are many more victims. And others who aren’t sure they’re victims.”

The magnitude of the find, and the possibility that Ricks’ trail crossed state lines and into other countries, led the FBI to get involved. Working with local police, agents have begun poring through the journals and the images to identify what appeared to be numerous unknown victims, all of them attractive, athletic boys in their late teens.

Ricks was born May 3, 1960, in northern North Carolina, graduating from Roanoke Rapids High School in 1978 and enrolling at the University of North Carolina . As a teenager, Ricks worked at summer camps, landing in the late 1970s at Camp Holiday Trails in Charlottesville near the University of Virginia. The camp, which caters to children with disabilities and chronic medical problems, is where he met his future wife, Abby, who is hearing impaired.

It’s also where he met a young deaf boy onto whom he immediately latched. The boy’s family provides an account of how the relationship began and evolved, and it also shows the beginning of a pattern that would last until his arrest 32 years later.

The boy’s older brother and mother said that Ricks was a junior counselor in the boy’s cabin and that he was very protective of the boy, almost to the level of obsession.

The Post is not identifying the boy or his family members because he is a victim of a sex crime and did not want to be named.

Ricks grew close to the family, visiting them in their Virginia home. Knowing that they were in a tough financial situation, Ricks at one point took the boy on a dream vacation to Disney World.

In summer 1978, when Ricks was 18 and the boy was 10, he offered to take him to Ricks’s family home in North Carolina because the boy’s mother had just divorced and didn’t have a place to live.

The brother, who described himself as a longtime friend of Ricks’ , said that’s when Ricks molested the boy.

Law enforcement officials who interviewed the victim – now 42 – this summer in Virginia said he recounted incidents at the North Carolina house that escalated from kissing to explicit sex acts. It is the earliest known abuse case involving Ricks, authorities say.

Roanoke Rapids police said they have received the case and are going to investigate; there is no statute of limitations for felonies in North Carolina.

Ricks received his diploma from the University of North Carolina in 1983, and he taught at a private school in Norfolk – Hampton Roads Academy – for a year. He also taught for a year at a private school in North Carolina.

Because private schools do not always require teaching certificates or teaching experience, Ricks was able to get the jobs without applying for a license.

Ricks and his wife left one small town for another, settling in Danville , where Abby Ricks had attended college.

There, Ricks immediately returned to education, according to school records. He worked as a substitute teacher in Danville beginning in November 1995 and then took a full-time job about an hour away in Burlington, N.C., for the 1996-97 school year, for which he obtained a one-year temporary state license, according to North Carolina records.

Danville then hired him as a full-time English teacher for the 1997-98 school year. Although he would have been required to have a Virginia teaching license for that year, state Department of Education records show that he did not and that he did not apply for one. Danville schools officials declined to explain how he was hired without a license.

Ricks began what would be a 15-year stretch hosting foreign exchange students in the United States. Working as both a coordinator who placed students in local homes and as a host himself, Ricks brought dozens of students to Danville.

Law enforcement officials said the foreign exchange program appears to have been a way for Ricks to import vulnerable teenage boys into his home. The students he handpicked were unfamiliar with American customs, spoke a non-native language, and were reliant on Ricks for food and shelter. And he would ultimately be able to send them back overseas.

Not long after going to Manassas in 2007 , Ricks began tutoring students in his spare time. He took a particular interest in one Fauquier County student, offering to take him on trips, buying him an iPod and trying to spend more time with him.

Ricks also reached out to the boy’s friends, including Joel Kaiser, also of Fauquier. Kaiser said he met Ricks via MySpace in 2008, when he was 16.

Kaiser corresponded with Ricks for about a week in mid-August 2008 before agreeing to meet him. His mother, however, intervened and prevented the meeting. Then, Kaiser said, Ricks started showing up and lingering at the restaurant where Kaiser worked. Police were asked to get involved, but they determined that he was in a public place and wasn’t doing anything illegal.

Joel Kaiser’s mother, Elena Kaiser, took every MySpace message between Ricks and her son to Osbourn Principal John Conti in an effort to protect Ricks’ students.

“He hadn’t committed any crime in what we presented, but it was behavior most reasonable people would find inappropriate for a high school teacher,” Elena Kaiser said. “Mr. Conti assured us he would go to the right people, and I felt confident he’d address this.”

Patrick Lacy Jr., a lawyer for Manassas schools, said Conti spoke to Ricks after the warning from Kaiser and told him not to have any contact with the Fauquier students. Lacy said Conti also spoke with a school resource officer and Fauquier police but that it appeared no laws had been broken.

“You just can’t fire someone because a complaint is made and the investigation shows no criminal activity,” Lacy said . Ricks remained at the school.

The Manassas victim’s father, who rented the room to Ricks and said he feels he and his family were betrayed, is livid.

“My biggest disappointment lies with the school system and the teachers union for failing to identify any type of behavior that Kevin obviously displayed,” the father said in an emotional interview. “That could have prevented this tragedy.”

Ricks’ arrest and the search of his home have sparked a federal investigation, largely focusing on Ricks’ alleged production of child pornography in several locations, law enforcement officials said. Authorities said child pornography charges are easier to prove than sexual abuse and could still yield decades of prison time in the event of a conviction. The FBI’s Washington Field Office said it is policy not to confirm or deny the existence of an investigation.

Authorities are considering charges in federal courts in Maryland and Virginia, based on the materials found at his Maryland home and on a laptop Ricks was carrying with him when he was arrested in Manassas. If convicted this week on the local charge in Manassas, Ricks would be registered as a sex offender and would not be able to teach again.

“He has spent his entire adult life preying on underage males,” said Manassas Police Chief Douglas W. Keen. “He has been able to stay one step in front of the system, moving out of the area and changing jobs before he was caught.”

Unwittingly, Ricks has provided authorities with a running narrative of his life, in the form of the piles of journals that date to his teen years. FBI agents and local police have been interviewing potential victims identified in those journals, and they are tracing his steps to the late 1970s, when they think it all began.

As school administrators examine their policies and procedures and regret they didn’t catch on to Ricks sooner, many say there is simply no way to screen out everyone.

Especially those who know the system.

“When something like this happens, it reflects on all of us and hurts us to the core,” Manassas Schools Superintendent Gail Pope said, starting to cry. “You will never know the angst professional educators go through when they read about this and know one of their own is responsible. ”