Former school janitor wants sexual assault conviction vacated

A former elementary school custodian convicted of pulling a fifth-grade student into a closet and touching her inappropriately has asked an appeals court to vacate his conviction,

On Feb. 21, assistant state public defender Thomas B. Aquino filed a brief with the District 3 Court of Appeals in Wausau alleging the state violated Stavros Iliopoulos’s due process rights when it failed to preserve “an accurate copy of an apparently exculpatory surveillance video showing the movements of the relevant parties, including a teacher walking within earshot of the closet where (Iliopoulos) was allegedly sexually assaulting the victim.”

In December 2022, a local jury found Iliopoulos, now 71, guilty of sexual assault, child enticement and false imprisonment. In the new filing, Aquino argues the state’s failure to preserve the original video of the Northwoods Community Elementary School hallway and alcove resulted in that jury viewing a screen-captured version with a “glitch” that resulted in “unreliable” timestamps.

The Oneida County district attorney’s office filed charges in November 2018 after a 10-year-old student reported Iliopoulos had intercepted her as she was leaving a restroom, forced her into a janitor’s closet and touched her upper chest and stomach area. 

According to the new filing, the complaint was based on statements the child made to the police as well as a video showing the school hallway but not the closet area. According to the complaint, Iliopoulos told police that (the child) came into the closet when he was inside, and so he pushed her out and said “get the hell out of here.”

The case first went to trial in September 2019 and a local jury deliberated for less than 90 minutes before delivering guilty verdicts on all counts. However, in February 2022, former Oneida County circuit judge Mike Bloom granted a defense motion for a new trial after determining that Iliopoulos’s trial attorney provided ineffective assistance of counsel.

Among other things, trial counsel failed to request all of the material related to the state crime lab’s analysis of the swabs taken of the child’s upper chest and stomach, relying instead on a summary of the DNA evidence.

Trial counsel was also faulted for choosing not to cross-examine the child and failing to present evidence that Iliopoulos had denied the child’s claims. 

Although the second trial featured a more focused discussion regarding the type, quality, quantity and location of the DNA evidence collected from the child’s body, the verdict was the same and Iliopoulos was ordered to serve a total of 14 years in prison to be followed by 16 years extended supervision. 

The new appeal focuses primarily on a motion hearing held before the second trial took place, related to the school security footage.

In the fall of 2022, the second defense team filed a motion to dismiss the charges based on the state’s failure to preserve the original video footage. Following a hearing, Bloom denied the motion.

In the new filing, Aquino explains that the school did not retain the original footage because the district’s policy at the time was to retain security camera footage for a period of 15 days. However, an Oneida County sergeant viewed the original footage and wrote a report summarizing his findings, including the times that Iliopoulos and (the child) each entered and left the alcove.

The defense received a copy of the sergeant’s report as well as footage created by police officers and school officials using “screen-capturing software” that purported to capture what appeared on the monitor while the officials played the video, according to the appeal. 

 “The resulting videos contained a number of inaccuracies,” Aquino alleges.

He summarized the “main discrepancies” as follows:

• First and foremost, the East Hall video created by the State somehow did not capture (the child) leaving the alcove area, despite (the Oneida County sergeant) reporting that he saw (the child) leave the alcove (when he reviewed the original footage).

“For reasons that have never been fully explained, the screen-captured version of the video shows (the child) entering the alcove, but never shows her leaving,” the brief states.

Importantly, Aquino also notes that the state never suggested that (the sergeant) was mistaken in his report.

• Second, the East Hall video is 14 minutes and 25 seconds long, but based on the starting and end times of the time stamps it covers 15 minutes and 49 seconds. 

• Third, a teacher and numerous students suddenly appear in the hallway in the East Hall video, even though there is no corresponding jump in the time stamps.

• Fourth, at the 17-second mark in the Interior Hall video, (the child) appears to exit the bathroom and the timestamp reads 11:14:36 a.m. However, one second later in the video, (the child) has moved only a few feet, but the time stamp reads 11:14:50 a.m., a 14-second increase from the previous second in the video.

“A defendant must not only show that the State failed to preserve apparently exculpatory evidence, but also that the defendant “was unable to obtain comparable evidence by other reasonably available means,” Aquino wrote. “It was undisputed that Iliopoulos could not obtain the original East Hall video that (the sergeant) viewed, given the school’s data retention policy. The circuit court instead ruled, in essence, that the Interior Hall video provided comparable evidence because the timestamp in that video showing when (the child) left the bathroom alcove could be used to determine when (she) left the alcove in the East Hall video.”

However, Aquino argues this reasoning “assumes that the timestamps in the two videos were reliable” when they were not.

“There were manifest errors in the timestamps in both the Interior Hall and East Hall videos,” he wrote, adding that the timestamps are “simply too unreliable to create a useable timeline between the two videos.”

 Even if they were, “requiring the jury to mentally reconcile the two videos does not have the same impact and evidentiary value of actually seeing the teachers in the hallway and then (the child) entering the hallway shortly afterwards,” he added.

“The timing of when (the child) left the alcove was critical to Iliopoulos’s defense,” Aquino wrote. “Teachers were in the hallway and within earshot of the closet after (the child) entered the alcove to use the restroom. (The child) testified that the assault lasted several minutes, during which she struggled against Iliopoulos and repeatedly told him to stop. According to the officer’s report of when (the child) left the alcove, one of the teachers would have been walking past the alcove during the assault. The fact that the teacher walked by the alcove without hearing (the child) was exculpatory evidence, as it was inconsistent with (the child’s) version of events. Although a second video from a different angle showed (the child) leaving the alcove, this video was not ‘comparable’ to the original video showing the entire hallway. The second video does not show the teacher walking down the hallway by the alcove, and the timestamps were too unreliable to reconcile the two videos. Accordingly, Iliopoulos’s conviction should be vacated and the underlying complaint dismissed.”

The state is expected to respond to the appeal later this month.

On a related note, a lawsuit filed by the child’s family against the School District of Rhinelander related to the assault remains pending. 

On March 4, 2024, the family filed a civil complaint alleging, among other things, the district was “negligent in hiring, training, instructing, monitoring and supervising” Iliopoulos and said negligence “was a substantial factor and proximate cause” of the injuries and damages they suffered.

The defendants, including Iliopoulos, filed responses to the suit last spring, however the case has not progressed any further.

According to court records, the school district responded to the suit in April 2024 but was no further action in the case until August, when the matter was transferred to the docket of new Oneida County circuit judge Mary Sowinski. 

Sowinski succeeded Bloom following his retirement from the bench on July 31, 2024. However, as Sowinski prosecuted the Iliopoulos criminal case for the state, the matter was reassigned to Judge Mark Fuhr of Price County on Aug. 16, 2024.

The most recent entry in court record events is a letter dated Oct. 23, 2024 requesting a scheduling conference.