Five Palm Beach Central High staffers pleaded not guilty Thursday to failing to report the sexual assault of a 15-year-old student.
Principal Darren Edgecomb, Assistant Principals Daniel Snider and Nereyda De Garcia, chorus teacher Scott Houchins, and the Wellington school’s behavioral therapist, Priscilla Carter, were arrested last month on charges of failing to report the girl’s assault to the Department of Children and Families, as required under Florida law.
The boy accused of assaulting her is Daniel Snider’s son, also a student at the school, according to court records.
All staff have been reassigned to positions that do not have student contact, Palm Beach County School District spokesperson Angela Cruz Ledford told the South Florida Sun Sentinel in a statement at the time. An interim principal, Reggie Myers, has taken Edgecomb’s place.
But it remains unclear if the other positions were filled ahead of the first day of school on Aug. 10. The district did not immediately respond to questions Thursday.
The assault occurred in April of 2021, according to police records. The girl told detectives that her parents had dropped her and her friend off at Lake Worth Beach. They had met up with two boys, one of whom forcibly touched her multiple times while she said no, according to the report.
School staff members read a letter about the assault and met with witnesses and the girl about it, but never reported it, according to the probable cause affidavit.
The school also refused to provide Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office detectives with records about the assault without a subpoena, according to police reports, while a school police officer, Lt. James Schnaderbeck, told detectives that he was a close friend of Snider’s, and that the boy was a “good kid from a good family.” He never gave detectives the information they asked for.
Schnaderbeck was not investigated for his involvement, according to the Sheriff’s Office.
Meanwhile, Edgecomb told the girl’s parents he had “conducted his own investigation” into the incident and decided it didn’t happen, a heavily redacted probable cause affidavit states, though he said he would remove the student accused of the assault from school activities, describing it as a punishment similar to when a student is caught vaping.
Snider’s attorney, Leonard Feuer, argued that Snider had no obligation to report his own son in a motion to dismiss filed earlier this month.
“Placing a parent in the position of having to report on their own minor child under such circumstances violates Florida’s constitutional right to privacy and freedom of expression, Florida’s Parents’ Bill of Rights and the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” the motion states.
Snider never suspected his own son of committing the sexual assault, the motion argues, and therefore had no obligation to report it.
All five defendants will have a calendar call on Jan. 4.
