A former Red Mountain High School student plans to sue Mesa's school district and police department, claiming more than a dozen adults could have halted a sexual relationship with a teacher that started when she was a teenager.
In a notice of claim filed Thursday, Tiffany Franco alleges Mesa Public Schools administrators, teachers and an on-campus Mesa police officer ignored persistent rumors about a sexual relationship between her and Alan Grantham, a special-education teacher and assistant football coach.
"This is not the case of one bad apple ruining the bunch, this is a case of failure to install boundaries between teachers and students," the claim states. "This is a case of institutionalized child predation. And this is a case of people who we put our trust in to protect our children, absolutely failing at every turn."
Grantham denied the allegations through an attorney in August 2019. He has not been criminally charged for any offense linked to Franco's claims.
The Arizona Republic typically does not reveal the names of victims of sexual misconduct, but Franco went on the record with her story in August 2019. The Republic and KJZZ, Phoenix's public radio station, originally reported Franco's story in "Position of Trust," a series exposing loopholes in state law that allow some teachers accused of misconduct to go without punishment or scrutiny.
While rumors of the relationship reached school officials as early as 2014, when Franco was still a student at Red Mountain, the school district did not investigate until 2016, after she graduated. Grantham resigned from the district in November 2016 and surrendered his teaching certificate in 2018.
Franco, now 22, has suffered because of the relationship, according to the claim. She hasn't gone to college because she doesn't trust the education system.
"I've just had some time to recognize what truly happened to me," Franco told The Republic this week. "I just don't want it happening to anybody else."
'IT JUST SEEMED LIKE CARING AT FIRST': She says she had a relationship with a teacher in high school. Looking back, she sees it in a darker light
Teachers and school personnel are required by law to report to police or the state Department of Child Safety and Department of Education investigators when they have a “reasonable belief” that a child is being abused by an educator.
In an interview with The Republic in 2019, Shaun Holmes, a Mesa district assistant superintendent of human resources, said school officials "did exactly what we should have done at every step of the way" in response to Franco's allegations.
A notice of claim is a precursor to a lawsuit. Franco is asking for $1.25 million to settle the suit immediately.
A battle in the state Legislature made it possible for Franco to take legal action, according to the claim. Last spring, two lawmakers refused to approve the state budget until their colleagues approved legislation broadening the window for survivors of childhood sexual abuse to bring civil lawsuits against their abusers and the institutions that may have protected them.
Franco was about 20 when she began to see her relationship with Alan Grantham in a darker light. Without the legislation, which changed the maximum age for victims reporting prior childhood sexual abuse to 30 from 20, she would have been too old.
The school district and an attorney for Alan Grantham did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Mesa police, through spokesmen from the city and the Police Department, declined to comment.
Relationship began over Snapchat
Franco said she met Grantham in her sophomore year at Red Mountain High School, when she sought tutoring from another teacher who shared a classroom with Grantham. The tutor, Stephen Walker, is named in the claim as one of the educators who did not report the alleged abuse.
According to the claim, Franco never got the tutoring she needed and instead spent the time talking with Walker about his personal life. She also met Grantham and they friended each other on Snapchat, a social media app where messages and photos disappear after a user opens them.
Franco said she first visited Grantham's house after he dared her to visit in a message on Snapchat. The relationship escalated over several months and turned sexual, she said, right around her 16th birthday.
Rumors about the relationship spread across the school through the rest of her high school career, she said. The relationship continued until after Franco graduated and ended when she was 20.
The rumor reached Karrie Flanigan, a Mesa police officer stationed at Red Mountain in the summer of 2014, according to a supplement in an August 2016 police report and a prior Republic email exchange with Mesa Public Schools spokeswoman Helen Hollands. According to the supplement, Flanigan did not remember the source of the information.
Flanigan asked for help from Jim Gowdy, who was in charge of athletics at Red Mountain, according to a police report. Gowdy confronted Grantham, who denied anything was happening. Flanigan asked Franco, who also denied the rumors. The 2014 investigation ended there.
According to Mesa police spokesman Nik Rasheta, the department in February 2019 initiated an internal review into Flanigan for her handling of the case. The review was concluded later in 2019. She was reprimanded for failing to write a police report, but the agency found that she did not fail her duty to report.
Other school officials also likely knew and didn't take action, the notice claims:
- Franco told Lindsay Guthrie, her former pom coach, about the relationship at one point. Guthrie allegedly told Gowdy, but did not call Child Protective Services, the agency that mandated reporters, which includes educators, are required to call if they suspect sexual abuse.
- Walker visited Grantham's house while Franco was there, according to the claim.
- Red Mountain teacher Jeremy Jones told a class that there was a teacher-student relationship and nobody was doing anything about it, according to the claim.
- Franco told Red Mountain teacher Ross Pagel that she was in a relationship with Grantham outside of school.
- Grantham would allegedly come to check on Franco during teacher Andrea Shook's class. Shook never told administrators about that behavior, according to the claim.
- The claim accuses former Red Mountain Principal Jared Ryan of failing to create an environment where "this information could be taken seriously and reported appropriately."
Mesa police investigation begins
In 2016, two years after Flanigan first heard rumors about Franco and Grantham, Mesa police and the school district began to investigate. Franco's father reported Grantham.
The district put Grantham on paid leave in August 2016, after Mesa police launched its investigation into the relationship.
Grantham participated in a meeting with his attorney, Holmes and the district's attorney, according to a transcript of that 2016 meeting from Mesa Public Schools.
Grantham in the meeting initially said he "knew of" Franco before she graduated, but that after her graduation, she started watching his dog. He first denied ever having a relationship with her, but then later in their interview said they'd become friends the month Franco turned 18.
Franco herself denied an inappropriate relationship to Mesa police in 2016. But, when confronted by a police officer who told her that multiple witnesses said she'd told them she had slept with Grantham before turning 18, Franco said she had sex with him just once before her birthday.
It was enough for Mesa police to recommend charges to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office in September 2016. Grantham resigned from the school district two months later.
The County Attorney's Office declined to prosecute Grantham, citing “no reasonable likelihood of conviction.”
Franco now contends in the claim that they started having sex right before her 16th birthday. She returned to Mesa police in 2018 ready to cooperate.
The detectives interviewed Pagel, who initially told detectives that while he heard the rumors about Franco and Grantham, he didn't think they were true. More than a month after that interview, Pagel called a Mesa detective to share more information, mentioning that he was a Christian and "this was weighing on his conscience."
According to the police report, Pagel said when he ran into Franco sometime after she graduated, she had alluded to her relationship with Grantham. He said he felt burdened by the information and that "he should have told someone."
Mesa police did not recommend charges to the Maricopa County Attorney's Office after the second investigation, citing "insufficient evidence at this time to establish probable cause."
Claim praises state lawmakers
The claim praises Gov. Doug Ducey and state lawmakers for legislation passed last year that upped the statute of limitations for civil lawsuits by victims of child sexual abuse. Before the law changed, victims could sue up to the age of 20 for incidents that occurred when they were children. Under the new law, they can sue until age 30.
Sean Woods, Franco's attorney, said most victims likely don't know that the statute has changed.
"They're not forgotten," he said of child victims who are now adults. "And that's the purpose of the statute."
Woods has also represented a former Skyline High School student who sued the Mesa district a few years ago.
That lawsuit was settled in February 2019. It claimed district officials ignored reports of an inappropriate relationship between a teen runner and Skyline High School track coach John Shea.
Two coaches in Skyline's athletic program alerted the school's athletic director to alarming behavior by Shea toward the student, but the director took no steps to investigate the concerns, according to the lawsuit.
In court filings, Shea's attorneys and the school district's attorneys deny the allegations. Without evidence that Shea sexually crossed the line with the teen while she was under 18, police closed the case.
Shea resigned from the school district and surrendered his teaching certificate in 2017. Mesa Public Schools declined to comment about the Shea lawsuit.
Reach the reporter at Lily.Altavena@ArizonaRepublic.com or follow her on Twitter @LilyAlta.
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