Middle school teacher accused of raping 14-year-old after video surfaces, TX cops say

A Texas woman is accused of raping a 14-year-old student of the middle school where she worked as a teacher, investigators say.

Police in Texarkana began investigating Kaija Javee Muldrew, 26, in late March after video surfaced showing Muldrew and the teenage victim together in the backseat of her car, according to court documents filed April 9 in Bowie County.

In interviews with investigators, Muldrew initially denied there had been any sexual contact between her and the boy, who was an eighth grade student in her reading class at Liberty-Eylau Middle School. It was her first year teaching, she added.

As the school year went on, they began communicating through text and got together multiple times after school hours, court documents show. Though some of the messages were sexual in nature, Muldrew told investigators she didn’t send any such texts herself and only continued texting with the victim because it made him “much easier to deal with at school.”

At one point, a school administrator noticed the boy had a picture of Muldrew as the background on his phone, which the boy said he had done as a joke, according to court documents.

When confronted with evidence, including text messages and the video, Muldrew said she sexually abused the boy twice in her car in November, according to the documents. Both times she drove them to a storage locker business and parked, investigators said.

Officials did not say how the video came to light or who took it.

McClatchy News reached out to Liberty-Eylau Middle School officials for comment on April 11 but did not immediately receive a response. Muldrew resigned from the school, according to court documents.

Muldrew is facing charges including indecency with a child, sexual assault of a child and improper relationship between educator and student (rape), records show.

Texarkana is a roughly 180-mile drive northeast of Dallas.

This story was originally published April 11, 2024 at 12:20 PM with the headline "Middle school teacher accused of raping 14-year-old after video surfaces, TX cops say."