Carlton Ross resigned from the DeKalb County School District in 2015 after a student accused him of kissing her and grabbing her buttocks.
But investigative files from the incident show the district's public safety department, under then-director Donald Smith, may not have fully investigated previous claims against Ross, which go back to 2011. Smith, himself, recently resigned after sexual harassment allegations surfaced against him.
The investigative files were provided to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution by the DeKalb County School District through an open records request.
In the Ross case, the teen was made to come forward in 2014 after adults informed James Jackson, the principal at Tucker High School, that the girl claimed Ross touched her inappropriately starting in 2011, when she was a freshman.
Ross, a JROTC instructor, would hug her and moan when doing so, the girl told investigators. He often kissed her on both cheeks, and commented on her body.
“I remember one day he asked me to give him oral sex,” the girl wrote in her statement, “but I told him no.”
Ross never gave a statement in the 2014 investigation.
“It was reported to the Region II office by James Jackson, principal at Tucker High School, that Sgt. Carlton Ross, ROTC instructor, had allegedly touched a female student inappropriately and made inappropriate suggestive comments to her in May of 2014,” Regional Superintendent Trenton Arnold wrote in a memorandum in February 2015.
“It does not appear that Sgt. Ross completed a statement for this investigation.”
About the Author
