Las Vegas school security guard charged in rape of eighth grader
Student sought solace from accused worker for panic attacks
The New Mexico Attorney General’s Office has charged a former security guard at a Las Vegas school in the repeated sexual assault of an eighth grade girl in the spring of 2019.
Abran Ulibarri, 52, is charged with criminal sexual penetration of a minor, criminal sexual contact of a minor, false imprisonment and bribery or intimidation of a witness and criminal solicitation to commit tampering with evidence.
Ulibarri, who worked at West Las Vegas Middle School until May 2019, was booked into the San Miguel County Detention Center on Thursday. It is unclear if he has an attorney.
According to court records, a 14-year-old student at the school went to Ulibarri for solace when she started having panic attacks in early 2019 and he began sexually assaulting her soon after.
The abuse went on for more than a month before an anonymous Facebook message was sent to the girl’s father in May outlining the abuse and the Las Vegas Police Department opened an investigation.
According to an arrest warrant affidavit filed in Magistrate Court:
The girl told police she had been regularly going to Ulibarri’s office when she would get anxious and he would talk her through it. She said things changed sometime after March 2019, when Ulibarri gave her his phone number and the two began texting.
Between then and May 2019, the girl told police she would be in Ulibarri’s office daily and “more often than not” he would sexually assault her. The girl said she felt Ulibarri “took advantage” of the times she was anxious or upset — one instance was when her grandmother was in the hospital.
The girl told police she felt “paralyzed” and was scared when Ulibarri assaulted her and, after multiple incidents, she was “beating herself up for not stopping Ulibarri ... and for not telling someone what was happening to her.”
Throughout this period, prosecutors say the two exchanged thousands of text messages and the girl told them Ulibarri would regularly send her sexually explicit texts, including asking her for nude photos. She said Ulibarri would tell her to delete them afterward, saying they would both “get in trouble” if anyone found out.
Ulibarri was placed on administrative leave in May 2019 after the allegations surfaced in an
anonymous Facebook message to the girl’s father. The girl’s family got a restraining order against Ulibarri in July.
When investigators with the AG’s Office spoke with Ulibarri in October 2020, he denied the allegations. Ulibarri said the two talked over text “often” but she only visited his office a handful of times.
Ulibarri told investigators the two would have “sexual” conversations but the physical contact between them didn’t go beyond one time he kissed her neck. He said she also sent him unsolicited photos of her in her underwear.
Ulibarri told investigators he believed the girl was making up the allegations to get money from him.