Criminal complaints filed recently in Santa Fe County Magistrate Court charge Aaron Chavez, 47, with five counts of sexually touching young girls during classes.

The archdiocese said last week that Chavez was placed on administrative leave as a result of the criminal investigation. On Monday, a spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment. Chavez is currently free on bond, court records show.

Chavez’s lawyer, John Samore, has said his client “denies and will vigorously defend against these allegations.”

Deputies first arrested Chavez on Jan. 20, alleging that he confessed to investigators that he inappropriately touched a 6-year-old girl during an art class he thought, court records show. Last week, Chavez was booked in jail on four more counts of criminal sexual contact with students based on new information provided to investigators, the sheriff’s office said.

After deputies first arrested Chavez, the four other alleged victims told their parents that Chavez had molested them, the sheriff’s office has said.

An 8-year-old girl told deputies that Chavez touched her buttocks and inner thigh on Jan. 14, according to an arrest warrant. Soon after, two 14-year-old girls told deputies that Chavez had inappropriately touched their buttocks various times in 2007 and 2008 when they were in his first-grade class at the school, an arrest warrant states.

Four years later, both teenagers, who had been in Chavez’s first-grade class, told their fifth-grade teacher about what Chavez did to them, the warrant says. The teenagers said they realized that Chavez had inappropriately touched them after the fifth-grade teacher led a class on “good touch, bad touch,” according to the warrant. That fifth-grade teacher later informed the school principal at the time about the girls’ statements, the warrant says.

The mother of one of teens said the Archdiocese of Santa Fe conducted an investigation but that officials told the mother the claims were unsubstantiated, the warrant says. Then, the mother reported the case to state police but no criminal charges were filed against Chavez, the warrant says.

State police Chief Pete Kassetas said Monday that his agency has opened an internal investigation into why Chavez wasn’t arrested or charged in 2012.

In one case, an 8-year-old girl told deputies that after she saw a news report on Chavez’s arrest she told her parents that the art teacher had placed his hands inside her underwear during a class in December, the warrant says.