For some, Monday, Aug. 27 marked the start of a new school year, bright with promise and possibilities. For Cesar Don Juan-Flores, a part-time coach at La Jolla Country Day School, the day was marked by his arrest on charges of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor.
Juan-Flores, 26, is accused of inappropriate relations with a 17-year-old female student at the prestigious private school.
The case was set into motion when the San Diego Police Department’s Sex Crimes Unit received anonymous information on Aug. 9 regarding Juan-Flores’ involvement with a student.
Detectives interviewed the girl and, one week later, Juan-Flores voluntarily came to the SDPD for an interview, according to police. Following the investigation, he was arrested without incident at his Bay Ho apartment and booked into San Diego Central Jail.
By the time of the Aug. 27 arrest, La Jolla Country Day School had already severed its relationship with Juan-Flores.
“He resigned during the course of the [police] investigation,” said Christopher Schuck, Head of School.
The suspect has been known as Cesar Don Juan since his days as a student at La Jolla Country Day, from which he graduated in 2000.
“From shortly after he graduated, he’s had a variety of part-time employments at the school ” and I think most of that time as a part-time assistant basketball coach, and then he has also done some work with summer camp and has been a part-time cross-country coach as well,” Schuck said.
The summer camp is coed, as is the cross-country team, since the Country Day boys and girls in cross-country practice together, but Don Juan evidently did not come into contact with the female student as part of either of those activities.
She “was not a student under his supervision,” Schuck said.
Don Juan played basketball for the Country Day Torreys during his years in school there and then enrolled at San Diego State University. He was pursuing post-graduate studies at SDSU at the time of his arrest.
Schuck said the school already has many safeguards in place to maintain a safe campus.
“We screen everybody we employ carefully”we check references,” he said. “Of course, everybody by law is required to go through fingerprint screening.”
School administrators also talk regularly with teachers and other staff members about the boundaries of appropriate behavior, Schuck said.
The alleged unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor was not due to a lack of supervision at the school, Schuck said, adding that it was “just a series of bad decisions made off-campus.”
Anyone with additional information on the case is asked to call the SDPD Sex Crimes Unit, (619) 531-2210, or the anonymous, toll-free Crime Stoppers line, (888) 580-TIPS.