DAMASCUS, Md. (WUSA9) -- The man accused of groping a 12-year-old student at John T. Baker Middle School in Damascus has pleaded guilty to related charges.
Forty-five-year-old John Epps, Jr. pleaded guilty to one count of second-degree assault and one count of fourth-degree sex offense for the October incident.
Authorities say he was doing work in the building as a contractor at the time of the incident.
Epps was in charge of installing and maintaining surveillance cameras at the school. Those very cameras captured him in a criminal act in a middle school hallway.
Epps was sentenced to five years incarceration, but that time was suspended. He was placed on five years of supervised probation and will be listed on Maryland's sex offender registry for 15 years. Epps will also undergo extensive sex offender risk assessment
Parents at the middle school were upset that it took school leaders nearly a month to notify them about the allegations against Epps.
Parents found out about Epps in a letter sent home from the school that said he was a temporary employee of a contractor who may have had inappropriately touched a student and that the background check done by that company was incorrect: Epps had a criminal record.
"When you send your daughter off to school, you are not expecting that she is going to be pawed by some 45 year-old guy as she makes her way through her school day," Montgomery County State's Attorney John McCarthy stated.
Court documents show Epps had a criminal history of groping women in public—of which the school system was unaware.
Epps worked in 58 Montgomery County Public Schools. He was just one of 21 MCPS employees and contract workers investigated for child sex abuse or exploitation in the last four years. Many have been prosecuted.
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