Heather Roe and Redlands Unified School District Face New Questions Over a 9-Year-Old Child’s Safety Disclosure After RUSD’s 2023 Sexual-Abuse Scandal and California DOJ Investigation
REDLANDS, CALIFORNIA — Is Redlands Unified School District repeating the failures involving minors that brought RUSD under California Department of Justice scrutiny in 2023?
That question is again being raised—this time in connection with Heather Roe, Redlands Unified School District, Mission Elementary School, RUSD mandated reporting, and a 9-year-old fourth-grade student who reportedly told a teacher she did not have a safe place to go home to.
The allegations involving Heather Roe and RUSD are separate from the sexual-abuse cases that rocked Redlands Unified School District in 2023. However, the disturbing parallel alleged by the child's father is simple: a minor reportedly raised a serious safety concern, adults within the school district allegedly received notice, and the father says his repeated demands for an investigation and appropriate reporting went unanswered.
Heather Roe, RUSD and a 9-Year-Old Child Asking for Help
According to court records and communications cited by the child's father, Corey Lohman, his then-9-year-old daughter, a fourth-grade student at Mission Elementary School in Redlands, California, reportedly told teacher Laurie Sauvage that she did not have a safe place to go home to.
The child's father alleges that the concern involved returning to the residence where her mother's boyfriend, Joseph Barrell, was present. Barrell has been identified in court materials cited by the father as a San Bernardino County juvenile dependency attorney.
Lohman says he repeatedly contacted Heather Roe at Redlands Unified School District asking for help, an investigation, and answers concerning whether his daughter's disclosure had been properly reported.
The father alleges that Roe and RUSD had knowledge of the controversy beginning in 2024.
He further alleges that recent court records contain an email in which Roe characterized his repeated communications as annoying and indicate that Redlands Unified School District blocked his emails.
Those communications should be evaluated in their complete context. But if the records establish that RUSD blocked a parent who was repeatedly requesting action regarding his 9-year-old daughter's safety disclosure, that deserves a direct explanation from the district.
RUSD 2023: A District Already Under Scrutiny for Its Treatment of Allegations Involving Minors
The allegations involving Heather Roe and Redlands Unified School District cannot establish that the district committed the same misconduct involved in its earlier cases.
But RUSD's history makes the new allegations especially concerning.
In April 2023, CBS Los Angeles reported that the California Department of Justice had launched an investigation into Redlands Unified School District's handling of sexual-abuse cases involving students.
The reporting found that 50 students had accused more than 25 teachers of sexual misconduct between 1999 and 2022. Eleven teachers were reportedly investigated by police, resulting in nine arrests.
The investigation ultimately went far beyond headlines.
In 2024, the California Attorney General announced that the DOJ investigation found systemic deficiencies in Redlands Unified School District's efforts to prevent and respond to allegations of sexual harassment, assault and abuse of students.
The California DOJ specifically found failures involving laws intended to protect minors, including California's Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act (CANRA), Title IX and provisions of the California Education Code.
RUSD was consequently subjected to extensive reforms and years of oversight.
Heather Roe and RUSD: Is History Repeating Itself?
That history makes the current allegations involving Heather Roe, Mission Elementary School and Redlands Unified School District impossible to dismiss as merely another disagreement between a parent and a school district.
The cases are different. The allegations are different. The individuals are different.
But the question of how Redlands Unified responds when information concerning the safety of a minor reaches district personnel is strikingly familiar.
After the 2023 RUSD scandal and subsequent California DOJ investigation, Redlands Unified was supposed to improve the way it receives, tracks, investigates and responds to allegations involving students.
Yet Lohman alleges that in 2024 his 9-year-old daughter told a Mission Elementary School teacher that she did not have a safe place to go home to, and he subsequently spent months attempting to get Redlands Unified School District officials—including Heather Roe—to address what happened.
If that allegation is supported by the underlying records, the obvious question is:
Did Redlands Unified School District learn from the tragedy involving its students—or did RUSD repeat the very institutional failures that brought the California Department of Justice to its door?
RUSD's Own Mandated-Reporter Policy Makes the Question More Serious
Redlands Unified School District's own published mandated-reporting information states that circumstances warranting reporting include a child's request for help relating to physical or emotional abuse.
RUSD also tells its employees that mandated reporters must report when they know of or reasonably suspect child abuse and describes procedures requiring immediate or prompt reporting followed by a written report.
That makes the facts surrounding this 9-year-old student's disclosure critical.
What exactly did the child tell Laurie Sauvage?
When did Heather Roe learn about the allegation?
What information did Corey Lohman provide to Heather Roe and Redlands Unified School District?
Did anyone make a mandated report?
Did RUSD investigate what happened at Mission Elementary School?
Did Heather Roe determine whether RUSD employees complied with district policy?
Why, according to the father, were his emails ultimately blocked while he was asking RUSD to help his daughter?
Those questions do not require speculation. They require records.
Heather Roe, Mission Elementary and the RUSD Mandated-Reporting Question
The father alleges that the adult his daughter was concerned about was Joseph Barrell, a San Bernardino County juvenile dependency attorney.
That creates another question requiring investigation rather than assumption: Did Barrell's government employment have any effect whatsoever on how RUSD handled the allegations?
1134 News has not established evidence proving that Heather Roe, Laurie Sauvage or another RUSD employee intentionally failed to report an allegation in order to protect Barrell or another government employee.
But the father's allegation deserves examination—particularly because the California DOJ's investigation previously identified systemic deficiencies in Redlands Unified School District's response to allegations involving minors.
Heather Roe and Redlands Unified School District: RUSD Cannot Afford Another Failure Involving a Minor
The 2023 Redlands Unified School District scandal involving minors should have changed the way every serious student disclosure is treated within RUSD.
The California DOJ investigation should have changed it.
The resulting court oversight should have changed it.
The mandated-reporting reforms should have changed it.
That is why the allegations involving Heather Roe, RUSD, Mission Elementary School, Laurie Sauvage and this 9-year-old child matter.
This is not evidence that the historical RUSD sexual-abuse cases and this child's allegations are the same.
It is a question of whether the institutional response was different.
A 9-year-old reportedly said she did not have a safe place to go home to.
Her father says he repeatedly asked Heather Roe and Redlands Unified School District to investigate and help.
RUSD had already been placed under extraordinary scrutiny concerning its treatment of allegations involving minors.
After the 2023 Redlands Unified School District tragedy involving minors, there should be no ambiguity about what happens when another child asks for help.
Report it. Document it. Investigate it. Protect the child.
If Redlands Unified School District did those things, the records should demonstrate it.
If it did not, Heather Roe and RUSD have serious questions to answer about whether Redlands Unified has truly learned from the failures that brought the California Department of Justice into the district in the first place.