EAGLE MOUNTAIN, Utah — A teacher at Eagle Mountain is being investigated for allegedly sexually abusing two children. The Utah County Sheriff’s Office says the teacher has left the country.
In a news release, the Utah County Sheriff’s office said that on December 15, 2024, they were told about 33-year-old Eagle Mountain man Ricardo Prins and his “possible unlawful sexual relation with two underage females.”
Detectives looked into the case and found proof to back Prins’s charges of 42 counts of criminal sexual misconduct with the minors, one count of aggravated assault, and one count of obstruction of justice.
The news statement said that Prins was a teacher at Rockwell Charter High School in Eagle Mountain at the time of the crimes. It was said that he used his job to control the people he abused. According to court records, Prins told the teens that he could hack their phones and that he used to work for the Brazilian government.
Court records say that Prins left the U.S. and went to his home country of Brazil on December 16, 2024, after being put on leave on December 15, 2024. This is what police learned at the start of their investigation.
Documents say that on December 18, police went to Prins’ house and talked to his wife. She told them that he was in Brazil but that she didn’t know when he would be back.
On December 19, Prins offered to talk to police officers from afar and told them he didn’t know about any investigations because he was in Brazil with his dying mother.
Police said Prins told them he would be back in Utah on January 5, 2025, but on January 3, he told them he would not be able to because of “visa issues.” As of January 14, he had not called the cops since then.
Police were working with Federal Law Enforcement partners to wait for Prins to come back to the U.S., but they found out that his travel documents had ended earlier in 2024, so he would not be able to legally come back.
Rockwell Charter High School told parents in an email on January 14 that Mr. Prins was no longer working at the school and that the cops were still investigating, so there wasn’t much more to say.
The public information officer for the Utah County Sheriff’s Office, Sgt. Ray Ormond, said it’s important for parents to talk to their kids about what’s right and wrong when it comes to relationships and exchanges with other people, like teachers.
“Keep the lines of communication open so that if your kids see behavior that seems odd, they can tell you as a parent, ‘Hey, mom or dad, this is going on, I don’t feel comfortable with this. Is this okay?'” Does this seem wrong?'” he asked.
Ormond said that you should call the police if your kids talk about any possible bad behavior.
The Utah County Sheriff’s Office wants anyone else who has been hurt by Prins to call Central Dispatch at (801) 798-5600 and ask to speak with a UCSO deputy.
The case has been sent to the Utah County Attorney’s Office for an arrest order for Prins, according to the sheriff’s office. The case is still being looked into in some ways.
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