Kevin Ricks' career as teacher, tutor shows pattern of abuse that goes back decades

Kevin Ricks' career as teacher, tutor shows pattern of abuse that goes back decades
Josh White, Blaine Harden and Jennifer Buske
July 25, 2010
washingtonpost.com

A four-month Washington Post investigation of former Manassas teacher Kevin Ricks' career as a teacher, tutor, foreign exchange host and camp counselor has revealed a pattern of abuse that goes back to at least 1978 and has left a trail of victims that spans the globe.

Kevin Ricks was a gregarious, well-traveled English teacher at Osbourn High School, a Walt Whitman devotee who was so popular that a photo of him in class was chosen to fill the opening page of the yearbook. A writer and photographer himself, Ricks would walk the halls of the Manassas school with a leather-bound journal of his musings tucked in his bag, next to his laptop computer.

What teachers, parents, students and even his wife didn't know was that his journals contained decades of dark secrets, a running handwritten commentary of Ricks's world of obsession, infatuation, pursuit, sexual abuse and international child exploitation...

But despite the abuse, Ricks moved from one teaching job to the next over nearly 30 years, navigating the nation's public and private school systems undetected, evading traps designed to catch him...

His case underscores the difficulties that educators and parents face when they only suspect abuse but can't prove it, and how reluctant even the most suspicious and well-meaning people can be in coming forward with allegations. It shows how someone can for decades wear a mask of trusted role model while using that powerful position to lure unsuspecting boys...