A former Montgomery County School System employee accused of sexually abusing a 10-year-old girl told police she was “flirting” with him and apologized for touching her, according to court documents.
Roy “Andy” Simmons III, 41, was arrested Thursday and accused of inappropriately touching a female student in November 2016 at Carderock Springs Elementary School in Potomac, where he worked at the time as a part-time paraeducator and as a group leader for an outside company at an after-school event. The district fired him in May after learning of the allegations, according to Principal Jae Lee.
Simmons was released on $15,000 bail on Friday on the condition that he have no contact with the girl or any other minors, according to court records.
The girl, who was 10 at the time and is now 11, spoke to police in May. She told them she knew Simmons well at the time, according to the documents.
She told police she attended an after-school program for which Simmons was a group leader, according to charging documents. He was working there as an employee of Kids Adventures, a company that sponsored the event.
When the group was going to watch a movie, the girl went into a staff lounge to make popcorn. There, Simmons came up behind her and hugged her from behind, rubbing her chest with his hand for about five seconds, the documents say.
The girl was “very uncomfortable” and told police that Simmons stopped her the next day and told her he was “sorry about yesterday,” according to the documents.
Police interviewed Simmons in June.
He said to detectives that the girl had been “kind of flirting” with him and had massaged his shoulders, a detective wrote.
Simmons told them he had gotten up to check on the popcorn and said he may have given her a hug. He said he “may have apologized” the next day, because he felt a hug wasn’t the most appropriate, the detective wrote.
The detectives asked if he was sorry for touching her chest and he said, “Yes,” according to the documents.
Simmons, a Gaithersburg resident, is facing charges of a fourth-degree sex offense and second-degree assault for an incident that allegedly occurred in November 2016.
Simmons worked at Carderock Spring Elementary School from the fall of 2015 to May 2017, according to MCPS.
In court documents, Simmons reported that he worked at Kids Adventures for six years. Representatives from Kids Adventures were not available for comment Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning.
