An administrator in Prince George’s County was released on $50,000 bail Wednesday afternoon after being indicted on four separate sex charges for allegedly molesting a 6-year-old male student while at school, according to a spokesman for the Prince George’s County State’s Attorney.
Shadrick Munro Woods, 40, vice principal at Gaywood Elementary School since September 2006, allegedly watched security cameras in his office to track when students entered bathrooms, according to sources close to the investigation. Woods allegedly followed boys into the bathroom and molested them, under the guise of helping them tuck in their shirts, sources said.
Suspicion fell on Woods when a 6-year-old involved in the case started acting strangely and then came home with a new hand-held video game player, authorities said. The device was thought by investigators to be a bribe from Woods.
Police are awaiting similar reports from other students.
The abuse was said to have occurred between Dec. 15, 2007, and March 10, 2008, when Woods, a Lanham resident, was reassigned to administrative duty outside of the school and away from children, according to schools spokesman John White. A full background check prior to his hire revealed no criminal history, White said, and the State’s Attorney’s Office backed up the finding.
Prior to his position at Gaywood, Woods worked in the Tampa, Fla.-based Hillsborough County Public Schools as a sixth-grade teacher and vice principal, according to Linda Cobb, an official with the Hillsborough school system.
In 1998, Cobb said, he was accused of pushing a student against a locker and grabbing his neck, a charge Woods denied.
He was served a letter of reprimand by the district, Cobb said, adding it was the one stain on his 11-year personnel record with the district.
Woods took a leave from his Hillsborough position at the same time he started at Gaywood. He officially resigned from Hillsborough in June 2007, nine months after taking the new job.
“He wasn’t supposed to do that,” Cobb said.
Pamela Pine, founder and CEO of Glenn Dale-based Stop the Silence, called childhood sexual abuse “a silent issue of epidemic proportions.”
More than one in four girls and nearly one in six boys will be sexually abused by the time they’re 18, Pine said, and more than 90 percent of the cases will be perpetrated by an adult well-known to the child.
