Police: Former math tutor sexually assaulted students in school

BRIDGEPORT — A former math tutor at a middle school in the city was ordered held in lieu of $300,000 bail Friday after being charged with sexually assaulting six students.

Jonas Sainvil, 47, who worked at Achievement First Bridgeport Academy charter school, sexually assaulted female students in the classroom while he was supposed to be helping them do classwork, police said.

Sainvil was charged Friday

with seven counts of fourth-degree sexual assault, misdemeanors; and eight counts of risk of injury to a child, felonies.

“The defendant is accused of showing predatory behavior to his students,” Assistant State’s Attorney Andres Bermudez-Hallstrom told Superior Court Judge William Holden during Sainvil’s arraignment Friday afternoon. “When he was confronted he admitted to some of the conduct.”

The prosecutor urged the judge to set a high bail for the defendant.

Sainvil’s lawyer, Assistant Public Defender John Crosby, asked the judge for leniency for his client, arguing that Sainvil has no prior criminal record and has a master’s degree in education.

“No prior criminal history? That’s interesting,” the judge said. “These type of allegations don’t usually just fall out of the sky.”

He ordered Sainvil held in lieu of the $300,000 bail and continued the case to May 24. He also ordered Sainvil to have no further contact with his students.

“No contact whatsoever,” the judge added.

According to the arrest warrant affidavit, police were dispatched to the school March 15 after six students complained they had been sexually assaulted by Sainvil and a seventh student reported having witnessed the alleged incidents.

The students, 11 and 12 years old, subsequently told a forensic interviewer that they had been assaulted by Sainvil while he was helping them with schoolwork in the classroom on a number of occasions in February and March, the affidavit states.

One student said Sainvil repeatedly would drop his pencil while sitting with her and then look under her skirt while retrieving it, the affidavit states. The other students said Sainvil would move very close to them while helping them do classwork and then begin rubbing their thighs and bodies, the affidavit states.

He is also accused with simulating a sex act with one of the students, according to the affidavit.

Police said Sainvil subsequently was fired from the school as the investigation began. School officials did not return calls for comment.

The affidavit states that, when detectives confronted Sainvil with the students’ allegations, he admitted he often got very close to students while helping them but contended that he only did so because he is hearing and vision impaired.

“I love them and I would never do anything intentionally, sexually to them and I miss them,” Sainvil told detectives, according to the affidavit.