KETTLE FALLS, Wash. – The Kettle Falls School District announced on Monday , 32, kissed three additional students inside the district’s Early Learning Center. Ford is scheduled to be released from jail Oct. 8 which is earlier than his 364-day sentence.
Austin Zavala and his wife were notified Monday evening by the district’s superintendent that their daughter, only four years old, was one of the three additional students kissed on the cheek by Ford.
The phone call from the superintendent left Zavala’s family overwhelmed, shocked, and angry.
“My blood was boiling,” he said.
The school district announced unsettling news to parents, that upon further review of 336 hours of video, they learned Ford kissed three additional students on the cheek. The initial reports were revealed in February.
The district apologized that the initial review of the video did not identify these additional incidents. Yet, Zavala does not blame the district, even though he wished he had known sooner. That is, officially; the father said when original reports came to light in February, he became suspicious that his daughter was also involved in Ford’s actions.
Unfortunately, according to the district, a third-party investigation proved that to be true.
“Kettle Falls School District was caught off guard just like I was,” Zavala said.
Zavala said the superintendent described the video footage of Ford and the children to him and his wife.
“He described the footage of Nathan picking her up and kissing her, and there’s another part of the footage where Nathan went behind a blind spot, behind a bookshelf, and had multiple children, including my daughter, crawling all over him,” he said.
Zavala said parents should be able to trust leaving their children under the care of teachers, any school district employees, without having to imagine something like this would happen.
“He was my daughter’s teacher, and you know, I shook hands with him,” he said. “We don’t want a person like that back into our community and our state, to hurt other people and have other people go through the same thing we did.”
In April, Ford pleaded guilty to attempted possession of depictions of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct in the second degree. And assault in the fourth degree with sexual motivation.
He was sentenced to 364 days in jail with credit for time served, but on Wednesday, NonStop Local KHQ confirmed with the Stevens County Jail that Ford is scheduled to be released early, on October 8 of this year.
“He deserves a lot more time than he got,” Zavala said. “He’s a predator and they’re among us, and I think he deserves more time in jail.”
