In the education world, they call it “passing the trash.”

For a 7-year-old girl at Utah’s Santaquin Elementary School, it appears to have led to a sexual encounter with a school janitor that may haunt her for the rest of her life.

The victim, now in her teens, told police in November that she was a 7-year-old attending Santaquin Elementary during the 2017-18 school year when a janitor pulled her into a closet at school and exposed himself. The janitor, she said, “threatened to hurt her or anyone she loved if she told anyone about what he was doing,” according to an arrest affidavit cited by KSL.

The young girl later identified Adrian Villar, 65, in a police lineup.

“Based on the information obtained through records checks, interviews, and photo lineups, I have successfully established probable cause indicating that Adrian Villar, employed as a janitor at Santaquin Elementary, is the individual identified by the victim in this case,” the arresting officer wrote. “It is alleged he pulled her into a closet during her tenure as a student thereby committing (sexual abuse of a child).”

The child sex abuse case is the second for Villar, who was previously working as a janitor at Sierra Bonita Elementary School in Spanish Fork in 2017, when he was alleged to have inappropriately touched two young boys.

Villar was charged in 2018 with two counts of felony aggravated sex abuse of a child and lewdness involving a child, a misdemeanor. But delays in the case have repeatedly postponed justice, and his next scheduled court hearing in the Sierra Bonita case isn’t until Jan. 8, according to the news site.

In that case, one of the alleged victims told police in 2018 Villar followed him into the school bathroom and forced him to commit sexually explicit acts. The second victim said Villar touched him inappropriately inside a maintenance shed, Fox 13 reports.

How Villar managed to move from one school to another amid an investigation into sexually abusing students is unclear, but it’s certainly not the first time a school employee accused of such crimes has moved on to continue their heinous behavior.

Numerous media outlets have highlighted how educators and other school employees caught molesting students have evaded criminal charges for years, often through union-negotiated separations that prevent school officials from speaking up about incidents.

Just this year in Michigan, James Baird, a vision specialist for schools in Garden City and Westland, was charged with sexually abusing four visually impaired girls between 2018 and 2020, about a decade after he left Allegan Public Schools following similar complaints from female students between 2005 and 2010, WOOD reports.

Despite the repeated reports of sexual harassment at Allegan schools, officials at Livonia Public Schools told the news site no red flags were uncovered during criminal background, reference, and unprofessional conduct checks when Baird was hired.

“We’re putting our kids at risk here,” Ven Johnson, attorney for one Allegan student suing the district over the situation, told WOOD. “Schools should do (investigations) on their own, but some don’t. When they do it, more than half the time, in my experience, their investigations are an absolute joke.”

While passing the trash has been a problem in schools for decades, little progress has been made to address it. A U.S. Department of Education report released last year found that while all states require prospective employers to conduct criminal background checks, only 27 require a check of employment history, eligibility and disciplinary status.

Nineteen of the 27 states require employers to request personnel files and employment history from current and former employers, while only 11 require applicants to share any history of investigations or discipline related to sexual abuse or misconduct.

Even fewer prohibit suppression of that conduct through termination or resignation agreements, or with confidentially or nondisclosure agreements.

The situation prompted lawmakers last year to demand the U.S. Department of Education address the issue “immediately,” though the result is unclear. The Every Student Succeeds Act prevents public schools from passing the trash, but it’s ignored by all but four states, according to the report.

“We urge the Department to use the powers at its discretion to address this lack of enforcement,” Sens. Pat Toomey and Joe Manchin, sponsors of the 2018 ESSA, wrote in a letter to the department last year. “When parents send their children to school, they expect them to be safe. However, this is not always the case.”