A family we wrote about is still seeking justice from the Chicago Public Schools after they claimed that their child was repeatedly sexually assaulted at a grammar school on the South Side.
Jesus Quiroga's child was 12 years old at the Pullman Elementary School on the Southeast Side in 2010 when the child told the father that she had been repeatedly gang raped in an enclosed hallway closet inside her classroom by two boys and two girls. The father filed a police report and told the principal about the rape.
The principal at Pullman at the time was Felicia Sanders Hooker, the daughter of recently convicted Commonwealth Edison lobbyist John Hooker who will be sentenced next January in a bribery scandal connected to former Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan.
Felicia Sanders Hooker was just promoted at the beginning of this school year to be the CPS Chief Schools Officer. She now leads the 17 school networks after serving as the Chief of Network 9.
The father Jesus Quiroga claimed that Sanders and the Chicago Public Schools covered up the repeated school sexual assault of his child with disabilities.
Instead of helping the family deal with the traumatic event, Felicia Sanders got CPS to issue an order barring the father from school property, Quiroga said. Sanders then had him arrested for trespassing when he was near the school grounds collecting signatures on a petition to have the principal removed for covering up his daughter’s rape.
A lawsuit was filed in September 2010 against the school staff and the Chicago Board of Education for the sexual assault that occurred inside the classroom during school hours. His attorney Jason Epstein at the time said the classroom teacher did not supervise the children during break time when the rape occurred. Her father said his daughter was being sexually assaulted over a period of two years because she was mentally handicapped and thus could not defend herself. Her attackers were classmates who had threatened to kill her and her family if she said anything.
“The principal covered up everything,” Quiroga said. “We needed their first names, last names and birthdays and she refused to give it.”
Sanders at first told Quiroga that the board of education would conduct an investigation. But then he waited and waited, and nothing happened. She kept telling him she was waiting for directions from the downtown office. Then she started to avoid him, he said.
It was at the April 27, 2011 local school council meeting where Sanders addressed the council about the alleged rape in the school which she claimed was unfounded by the Department for Children and Family Services, according to minutes taken at the meeting.
The next day, Quiroga said, Sanders wrote a letter accusing him of making “threatening gestures, spoke loud outbursts, used excessive profanity with an elevated voice, made inappropriate comments to a few LSC members.”
When Quiroga went to court he thought his case would be thrown out. Instead, he saw high-up CPS officials who attended the court hearing to ensure he would be convicted. He was then found guilty of trespassing on state property.
Sanders did not answer questions the first time this story was reported in 2017. When we contacted CPS about his case an attorney from the law department said that there are so many cases of alleged sexual assaults that it takes time to investigate.
Jose Castanada, a police detective in the children’s division at 13th and Damen at the time, investigated the rape charges that led to one of the students being convicted. Quiroga said the detective told him that the principal would not provide the names of the alleged rapists because she told him she was not aware of any rape incident that happened in the school. But later the assistant principal under Sanders provided the first two names to Castenada while the principal was out of the country on vacation, he said.
Thomas Bilyk, chief prosecutor at the Juvenile Center, who convicted one of the female rapists in December, 2010, told Quiroga that he could only sentence one predator to supervision because it was her first offense and he was not aware of any other children involved in the rape because they couldn’t get cooperation from the school, Quiroga said.
Quiroga was given supervision for a first-time conviction. In 2015 the Illinois Appellate Court in People vs. Quiroga overturned his conviction.
During the investigation Principal Sanders moved up the CPS ladder. She became the Network 9 Chief. She recently moved up again and become the deputy chief of network support earning $188,000 plus $48,252 in benefits. She is now the chief of the chiefs!
Quiroga said his life has been destroyed as a result of the coverup. He lost his job in maintenance after he believes pressure was put on his employer to fire him and he had to move back home to live with his parents. Hooker was named the head of the Chicago Housing Authority in 2015 by Mayor Rahm Emanuel when Quiroga was doing work with the agency before he was abruptly fired.
He also said his daughter dropped out of school because of the trauma she suffered and did not re-enroll to graduate which has prevented her from getting a better paying job. He said he could not transfer her to another school because she had to attend the neighborhood school.
Least anyone think it is only Quiroga who was wronged, another victim wrote to this writer three years ago to say that they too experienced harassment, retaliation and humiliation. When this person who worked under Sanders filed a sexual harassment complaint in 2017 with the CPS EEOC, they were immediately fired and banned from every CPS location which included their children's school, just like Quiroga.
"I reported it to Ms. Sanders and she retaliated against me too by banning me from CPS," the person wrote in 2019, who requested anonymity. "There was no investigation. No justice. In my opinion, if they can do this to adults, what do you think happens when children complain?"
Quiroga meanwhile has not gotten justice yet for his daughter. He fired two lawyers who worked on his case because he believed they didn't want to fight CPS hard enough to get what his daughter deserved.
Terwon Matthews was one of the boys who had raped his daughter in 2010, according to teachers and Quiroga. Three years ago he was accused of kidnapping a woman in Frankfort and a man in New Lenox as well as armed robbery and car hijacking. Matthews and the others stole the victims' debit cards and cars while threatening them with handguns.
The Peter Principle at work. Felicia Sanders Hooker obviously has a big Peter, like Chicago's former mayor.