Ex-school worker faces new charges of sex abuse
Cases from 4 years ago when man was teaching assistant weren’t prosecuted
A former Santa Fe Public Schools teaching assistant who said he’d been wrongly accused of child molestation four years ago is back in jail, charged with raping the 7-year-old daughter of a longtime friend.
Sergio Muterperl, 34, is charged with two counts of criminal sexual penetration, two counts of criminal sexual contact of a child under 13, intimidation of a witness, interference with communications and battery against a household member, according to online court records.
“The weight of the evidence against the defendant is strong,” Assistant District Attorney Allison Jane Schumacher Smithkier wrote in a motion that asked the court to hold Muterperl without bond. “A seven year old minor child, described the sexual abuse … in very graphic detail.”
The prosecutor wrote that the child reported Muterperl had assaulted her about 20 times and that her statement was corroborated by other evidence. When the child’s mother told Muterperl what her daughter had said, he went to the woman’s house and tried to take her phone away so she couldn’t call police, Schumacher Smithkier added.
Muterperl’s public defender, Matt Carlisle, said through
a spokeswoman his office had just received the case and was reviewing the evidence and what the state provided.
Santa Fe police arrested Muterperl in 2016 on charges of child rape and child sexual assault, accusing him of molesting two girls, then ages 7 and 9, who attended Atalaya Elementary in the 2014-15 academic year when he was a teaching assistant there.
The case was dropped in October 2016, however, because of a lack of timely prosecution, according to court records.
Prosecutors later refiled charges centering on allegations involving only the 9-year-old girl. A grand jury indicted Muterperl in April 2018 on seven charges: three counts of first-degree criminal sexual contact of a child under 13, three counts of criminal sexual contact of a minor and one count of enticement of a child.
The refiled case was dismissed after the 9-year-old child’s family decided it would be traumatic for her to participate in Muterperl’s prosecution.
First Judicial District Attorney Marco Serna said at the time he could not comment on why allegations made by the younger girl were not included in the refiled charges, but he addressed the issue in an email Monday, writing the grand jury in the case of the 7-yearold had not found probable cause to charge Muterperl.
“It is tragic beyond words that Muterperl exploited and abused another child, and I am asking the Court to hold Muterperl in jail pending trial,”
Serna said in an email. “My office is committed to prosecuting predators like Muterperl and will not stop until he and his kind are held accountable for their actions.”
The mother of one of the girls who had made allegations against Muterperl in 2016 later filed a lawsuit against him, Atalaya Elementary and the Santa Fe school board, contending officials “knew or should have known” Muterperl had a “history of inappropriate conduct and posed a threat to students.” The civil case was settled in 2018 for $500,000, according to reports.
In June 2019, a former employer said in a lawsuit Muterperl had convinced her he was innocent of the child sex crimes and that she had loaned him $25,000 for legal fees. According to her complaint, he still owes her more than $20,000. Court records show a judge found in the former employer’s favor in August, but Muterperl filed bankruptcy in September.
Muterperl has faced several other criminal charges, most of which later were dropped.