Two Montgomery County Public Schools high school students accused of raping 11-year-old girls off-campus are suspended from school while their cases are pending, school officials said Tuesday.
Ivan Reyes Lopez, 19, of Silver Spring and Jonathan Jose Coreas-Salamanca, 20, were arrested this month in separate, unrelated cases. Montgomery County police earlier say they raped 11-year-old girls in apartments in 2019. State court records listed addresses for Coreas-Salamanca in Adelphi and the New Hampshire Estates area.
Lopez attends Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School and Coreas-Salamanca attends Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring.
In a joint letter to parents Tuesday, Blair High Principal Renay Johnson and Bethesda-Chevy Chase Acting Principal Shelton Mooney wrote that the students, who they didn’t refer to by name, would not return to school while their cases were pending. The alleged rapes happened off-campus, they wrote.
Responding to questions about 19- and 20-year-old men attending high school, Johnson and Mooney noted that state law mandates that MCPS must provide a free education to all students age 5 to 21 and that hundreds of students 19 or older graduate from high school each year.
“There is no data suggesting that being a high school student at 19, 20 or 21 makes a person more or less likely to commit a crime. Any suggestion otherwise is wrong and harmful to our students who work hard every day in their classrooms, extracurricular activities and jobs,” Johnson and Mooney wrote.
News of the rape arrests was first reported by ABC 7.
Charging documents state that Lopez invited an 11-year-old girl to his apartment last summer near “Rolling Woods,” based on an interview police conducted with the victim. The girl told police that Lopez touched her genitals while they were in his apartment.
A warrant for Lopez’s arrest charging him with second-degree rape was issued on Feb. 12 and he was taken into custody on Feb. 19, according to state court records. Lopez is due in Montgomery County District Court on March 20 for a preliminary hearing. Attorney information was not listed Tuesday night.
Coreas-Salamanca, according to charging documents, text messaged with a separate 11-year-old girl last year about acts of sexual abuse he committed with her.
Documents state that the victim’s father told police that on Dec. 24, he found the cellphone his daughter used to communicate with Coreas-Salamanca. After reading the text messages, the father realized that Coreas-Salamanca gave her the phone for the purpose of arranging times to meet.
Police seized the cellphone and determined, based on text and Facebook messages, that the acts of sexual abuse Coreas-Salamanca committed with the victim happened, court documents state.
Police issued a warrant for Coreas-Salamanca’s arrest on Feb. 5 and he was taken into custody on Feb. 13, according to state court records.
Coreas-Salamanca is charged with second-degree rape, sex abuse of a minor and third-degree sex offense. He is due in District Court for a preliminary hearing on March 13. Attorney information was not listed Tuesday night.
Bethesda Beat staff writer Caitlynn Peetz contributed to this story
Dan Schere can be reached at daniel.schere@moco360.media
