Ex-teacher facing 14 new charges as girls say he fondled them in class
Ten days after Christopher Falzone was accused of child molestation as a camp counselor, he faces 14 new charges after four students from Renaissance Charter School at Cooper City accused Falzone of molestation during the 201718 school year.
Falzone, who posted $25,000 bond three days after his Aug. 13 arrest, was rearrested Thursday on four counts of lewd and lascivious molestation by an adult on a victim under 12; four counts of lewd and lascivious behavior; and six counts of sexual battery by an adult on a victim under 12. The math teacher remains in jail without bond.
These aren’t the first young students to accuse Falzone of fondling. Three Sheridan Hills Elementary students did so late in the 2012-13 school year, Falzone’s fifth year there as a substitute teacher. Only one child’s parent wished to pursue criminal charges. The Broward State Attorney’s Office didn’t prosecute, believing a conviction unlikely with a rebutting witness and no corroborating witness.
It’s unclear whether Falzone included his employment at Sheridan Hills on his application or if he had it on his LinkedIn page when he was hired at Renaissance Charter in August 2015.
The Renaissance Charter accusers, now all 9 years old, spoke with deputies from the Broward Sheriff’s Office on Aug. 14, according to a probable cause affidavit. The girls all said that when the class watched videos, Falzone would choose them to sit next to him in the back of the class to “assist him in taking notes.” There, they said, Falzone would fondle them while the rest of the class faced forward.
Accuser No. 1 “advised that it hurt when he would place his fingers in her and that she was scared to say anything to anyone,” the affidavit reads. “Victim advised that the defendant would instruct her not to say anything because he could get into trouble.” She said Falzone molested her in the same manner during private tutoring sessions three times a week.
Accuser No. 2 said Falzone would put his arm around her “as if he as hugging her and place his hand down her school uniform and in her underwear and touch her butt.”
Accuser No. 3 said Falzone would put his hand up her skorts, rub the inside of her thigh, then work his way up to her genital area
There was a reason for it,” said Glenn Downing, the current chairman of the transportation board. “But the reason no longer remains.”
Budget pressure is the main force shaping next week’s showdown on the future of transit in MiamiDade. That’s when a more powerful county board, the Transportation Planning Organization, is set to pick whether South Dade should get a new $1.3 billion 20-mile Metrorail route or an advanced rapid-transit bus system that costs about 80 percent less. Before it took a vote on the subsidy cutoff, the Citizens’ Independent Transportation Trust urged an extension of Metrorail about eight miles south to Cutler
Ridge and use of rapidtransit bus lines to complete the rest of the link to Florida City.
The transportation board has already voted twice to pressure the County Commission to end the operating subsidies in order to start spending the money on transportation projects.
But this is believed to be the first time it has voted to end the subsidy outright. County law gives the 13-member County Com- mission the option to adopt or reject the board’s decisions on how the transportation tax should be spent.
With a commission rejection, the transportation board would need to reaffirm its recommendation exactly as it was presented. If the plan passes again, it would then head back to the County Commission — with a catch. The commission could reject it a second time, only with a two-thirds vote.
Because this has never happened before, MiamiDade officials were mum Friday about the exact consequences if the board’s recommendation survives intact. The county attorney’s office declined public comment.
The board’s action dovetails with a lawsuit arranged by Commissioner Xavier Suarez, a lawyer. Filed by a Coral Gables commissioner and others, it asks a judge to declare the operating subsidy a violation of the framework for the 2002 referendum.
The 2009 decision to allow operating subsidies helped stop the fiscal bleeding in transit, which relies on property taxes to fill budget holes. Transit systems lose money across the country, and in MiamiDade passengers pay about 25 cents of every dollar a trip costs.
For Mayor Carlos Gimenez’s proposed 2019 budget, the $715 million transportation budget has about $225 million from the “general fund” — a source of revenue that consists mostly of property taxes.
Gimenez’s budget ends the subsidy in 2023, banking on a surge in extra property taxes to fund the transit department. His transit chief, Alice Bravo, warned that just cutting off the subsidy next year would mean austerity measures to compensate for the lost money. That’s bound to mean major cuts in transit, if not elsewhere in county government.
“It’s easy to make the recommendation. But nobody wants to step up and say where we should take it from,” Bravo said. “Either there’s a reduction in service provided by transit, or there would be a reduction in some other department, likes parks or public safety.”