Adam Clayton Ross, a 27-year-old Grand Junction, Colo. man, was arrested Thursday for allegedly posing as a school tutor and then sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl, 7News reports. Ross is being charged sexual assault on a child.
According to the Mesa County Sheriff's Office arrest warrant, Ross met the teen girl on MySpace and discovered she attended the Grande River Virtual Academy, an online schooling program through Mesa Valley School District 51. Ross obtained the girl's home address and showed up at her home with fake credentials, presented a letter on District 51 letterhead and claimed he was a tutor working with her online school program. The girl's parents thought the credentials looked legitimate and allowed Ross to meet with the young girl on three occasions for tutoring sessions, according to KJCT.
Ross began tutoring the girl in her home, the Grand Junction Sentinel reports. All of the home tutoring sessions were observed by the parents without noticing anything "significantly inappropriate," the arrest affidavit said. But, between their second and third sessions, Ross convinced the girl to sneak out of her home late one night. Ross then led the girl to an abandoned trailer on C 1/2 Road and sexually assaulted her in the trailer.
According to the arrest affidavit, the victim claims that Ross forced himself onto her and had sex with her without a condom. Ross told the teenager to not tell anyone about the incident or she would get in trouble. Before she left for home, he offered her a Brisk iced tea that the victim said she only had a sip of because it tasted "funny" and that it caused her to "have memory problems for the next few days."
The affidavit goes on to state that the victim's mother said she was uncomfortable with Ross because he "frequently went outside to smoke" and most of the time talked to the girl about topics outside of school work. The girl's father had also become suspicious when he discovered text messages and emails between the two that showed the pair had a relationship outside of simple tutoring.
Ross is being held at the Mesa County Detention Facility on a $250,000 bond.