Ex-school aide charged with rape

More than a year after he fathered a child with a teenage student, a former Spokane middle school teacher’s aide has been charged with child rape and sexual misconduct relating to their relationship.

Former Salk Middle School employee Titus V. Epefanio, 29, was arrested Wednesday and charged with third-degree child rape and first-degree sexual misconduct with a minor stemming from a relationship he had with former Shadle Park High School student Brianna L. Sturgeon, now 18.

Epefanio and Sturgeon’s relationship became public in May 2005 when a birth announcement listed him as the father of the girl’s child. However, Sturgeon’s family never called police or officially complained to the school district.

The prosecutor’s office filed charges Wednesday after receiving a request from Spokane police, said Ed Hay, supervisor of the office’s special assault unit. He said police received a complaint about Epefanio this past May – the same month that Sturgeon obtained a one-year restraining order against Epefanio prohibiting him from coming within two city blocks of her house, school or workplace.

But Epefanio’s attorney, Dave Hearrean, said Friday that criminal charges are just an underhanded move by Sturgeon in an ongoing custody battle between the former couple. Sturgeon’s attorney faxed family-law court documents to police, starting the investigation, Hearrean said.

Epefanio quit his job as a teacher’s aide in the district in July 2004, said Spokane Public Schools spokeswoman Terren Roloff. In spring 2005, Epefanio told The Spokesman-Review that he quit his position of eight years voluntarily and that the sexual relationship began after he quit his job.

At issue in the case is what type of authority, if any, Epefanio had over Sturgeon. It’s not a crime in Washington for a 16-year-old girl to have consensual sex with an adult as long as he doesn’t have authority over her.

In this case, it appeared that Sturgeon helped Epefanio coach a youth basketball team on her own time and outside of an organized school program. Thus, his position as a teacher’s aide didn’t give rise to criminal misconduct.

Now, prosecutors are using a part of the law that applies to adults who have sex with minors while in a supervisory relationship. The charges also include a potentially aggravating factor – a pattern of ongoing sexual abuse of the same victim. The prosecutor’s office alleges that Epefanio and Sturgeon had a relationship from Oct. 3, 2003, to Oct. 1, 2005 – a claim Hearrean adamantly disputes.

Also at issue is whether Sturgeon was 15 or 16 when their relationship started. Third-degree child rape only applies if she was younger than 16.

“None of this is true,” Hearrean said. “He never had any sexual relationship with her when he was at the school district.”

Last spring, Epefanio said he and Sturgeon planned to marry. She moved in with him in September 2004, according to court papers.

But their relationship soured, and in April, Sturgeon filed for a restraining order against Epefanio, alleging that he became possessive and raped her in mid-March, according to court papers.

A Spokane County Superior Court judge issued a yearlong restraining order May 9, forbidding Epefanio from contact with Sturgeon and their 1-year-old daughter, except for twice-weekly, four-hour daytime visits.

“This is total retaliation for setting up his rights as a father for being able to see his daughter,” Hearrean said.

Sturgeon met Epefanio in fall 2001 while in the seventh grade at Salk Middle School, where she worked with two other girls as his sports manager for the school’s JV boys’ basketball team, according to court papers. While attending Shadle Park High School, she ran into Epefanio, who asked her to return and manage the boys’ JV basketball team, which she did.

“From the outset of my being around Mr. Epefanio, he made progressively more and more inappropriate advances in the junior high, leaving notes for me, and eventually kissing me on the mouth on March 27, 2003 at Salk Middle School, while I was alone waiting for my father to pick me up after practice,” Sturgeon said in written court testimony.

According to Sturgeon’s testimony, shortly thereafter – at age 15 – she began having sex with Epefanio.

Epefanio has said the relationship “wasn’t while coaching, and it wasn’t a situation while working with the district,” where he worked with special education students.

At 16, Sturgeon became pregnant and dropped out of Shadle Park to attend an alternative school “so that he would know where I was at all times, and have more access to me,” according to her testimony.

“He gave me a cell phone and monitored all of my phone calls,” she said. “After the baby was born on May 6, 2005 his controlling behavior got so bad that I had virtually no private life, with friends or family.”

In her request for a restraining order, Sturgeon also asked that Epefanio be ordered to relinquish his guns, forgo his concealed weapons permit, undergo a psychological evaluation and take an extensive anger management class.

Roloff, the school district spokeswoman, said the district’s position hasn’t changed from a year ago, when the girl’s mother came forward.

“We never had misconduct complaints against him,” Roloff said.

To work in Spokane Public Schools, Epefanio underwent a required 50-state background check for conviction and recent arrests. His record was clean, according to past news reports.

Sturgeon’s mother, Roberta Summers, previously said she never called police or officially complained to the school district because she wasn’t aware of the relationship until Sturgeon became pregnant in August 2004.

Hearrean said Epefanio is a good father.

“A lot of people are really surprised that this happened,” he said. “I think they were just mad at the time, turned this in, and forgot about it.”

Epefanio was released Wednesday from the Spokane County Jail on bond.