Dist. 218 Knew Employee Was An Alleged 'Peeping Tom:' Lawsuit

OAK LAWN, IL -- The attorney for a 16-year-old girl and her parents has filed a lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court over claims that CHSD 218 ignored past warnings about a Richards High School employee accused of locker room peeping. Raymond Van Syckle, 32, of Joliet, is charged with possession of child pornography and unauthorized video recording of a minor. Prosecutors allege that Van Syckle secretly recorded the girl on Oct. 30, 2015, as she changed clothes in the locker room at Richards High School in Oak Lawn. Van Syckle’s criminal case is currently before Cook County Judge Kerry Kennedy in Bridgeview.

According to the charges, Van Syckle was an eight-year employee of Dist. 218, where he worked as the pool manager and assistant varsity girls volleyball coach for Richards High School in Oak Lawn. He was not a certified teacher. The morning of Oct. 30, 2015, he asked the then 14-year-old girl if she could leave swimming class early to deliver some contracts for him to the athletic director. When it came time for the student to deliver the documents, Van Syckle excused her early from class.

Prosecutors said during his 2015 bond hearing that Van Syckle warned the girl not to change in the stall area of the locker room because the floor had recently been treated with chemicals that could burn her feet. As the student was changing into her street clothes, she noticed a cell phone pointing directly at her above some curtains of a window to a storage area directly across from where she was dressing. The girl told police she saw Van Syckle leaving the storage room, so she hid in a bathroom stall. The other students returned to the locker room after their swim class was dismissed. The frightened teen told her friend what had happened. When the girls heard Van Syckle calling her name, the prosecutor said they ran to the dean’s office. Van Syckle was arrested a few days later on Nov. 1, 2015.

New Peeping Allegation Emerges

A civil complaint was filed in federal court in July 2016. Without ruling on the allegations, the federal judge said the case did not meet federal statutes. The complaint was re-filed in Cook County Circuit Court on Nov. 8. The lawsuit names the CHSD 218 Board of Education, Dist. 218 Supt. Ty Harting, former Richards principal John Hallberg, the current principal Mike Jacobson, assistant principal of athletics Ken Styler and Van Syckle as defendants. The plaintiff and her parents are seeking a jury trial and damages in excess of $50,000. The parents contend that their daughter has been physically and emotionally traumatized and permanently affected by the alleged sexual abuse. Dist. 218 could not immediately be reached for comment.

“We waited awhile before refiling to see how the criminal case played out,” Wheaton attorney Raymond Sanguinetti said, who is representing the teen and her parents in the civil case. “We knew there were other complaints to the school about [Van Syckle] by girls who felt uncomfortable around him.”

Both criminal court records and the civil complaint noted that Richards High School administrators had fielded other complaints about Van Syckle peeping at girls in the locker room through the same curtained window prior to his 2015 arrest. During the fall of 2013, another girl was returning to the locker room after doing laps in the Richards swimming pool. Discovering that the main door to the locker room was locked, the student cut through the pool office and storage area. The girl claims she saw Van Syckle allegedly peeping at two minor female students as they changed in the locker room. After she walked in on him, Van Syckle pretended he had been closing the curtains, court records said. The student reportedly informed Richards administrators, but nothing came of it. Oak Lawn police say Van Syckle has not been charged in other possible crimes

“Despite these reports, CHSD 218 took no action against Van Syckle. In fact, after these reports, Dist. 218 placed Van Syckle in other positions in the athletic program that give him unsupervised access to female students … Van Syckle was allowed to have one-to-one contact with female students,” the civil complaint maintains.

Student Was Terrified

Van Syckle’s case is currently winding its way through the Cook County criminal court system. His attorney is trying to get the child pornography charges against his client tossed out, whom he claims was intimidated and coerced into making incriminating statements by then-Richards principal John Hallberg. After the girl complained to the school dean on Oct. 30, 2015, Van Syckle was ordered to report to Hallberg’s office. In the presence of Hallberg, Oak Lawn Police Det. Steve Scannell, the dean Marie Cerwin, teachers union rep Jason Alexander, and assistant principal Michael Jacobson, Van Syckle turned over his cell phone in the principal’s office. Van Syckle also signed a form giving Oak Lawn police permission to search the phone. Van Syckle allegedly admitted to being in the storage area around the time that 14-year-old girl was changing in the locker room. Van Syckle’s attorney says his client made the statements because he was afraid he’d be fired if he didn’t answer questions. The attorney is trying to get Van Syckle’s statements tossed. Van Syckle was terminated by the district shortly thereafter.

Oak Lawn police later said it appeared as if Van Syckle, before being questioned in the principal’s office, had tried to erase any photos and video recordings of the student. Police found a thumbnail photo in Van Syckle’s phone purportedly depicting the 14-year-old girl in a sports bra with her bare buttocks showing. Van Syckle’s attorney to get the child pornography charges dismissed on the basis that the images allegedly recovered from Van Syckle’s cell phone do not qualify as “lewd exhibition” because they only depicted “partial nudity” and are not considered “obscene, lustful, indecent, lascivious or lecherous” as defined by Illinois courts. Judge Kennedy is expected to rule on the motion at Van Syckle’s next criminal court hearing on Jan. 24.

Van Syckle is currently out on $150,000 bond while he awaits trial. He is also said to be on electronic home monitoring, according to court records. The student, now 16, along with her parents, were interviewed last month by the syndicated news magazine Inside Edition, in a segment called “locker room peeping toms.” The girl described feeling “terrified” when she saw a cell phone with its camera feature pointed over a bent curtain rod in the locker room. Van Syckle was also confronted outside the Bridgeview Courthouse by Inside Edition reporter Lisa Guerrero. Van Syckle did not respond when Guerrero asked him if he was “just a locker room pervert.”