PORTLAND (OR)
KGW8 [Portland, OR]
May 22, 2026
By Jamie Parfitt, Devon Haskins, and Alex Jensen
Court documents obtained by KGW provide more details about why Longview Public Schools Superintendent Karen Cloninger is accused of stifling an internal investigation into a series of reported sexual assaults involving Mark Morris High School students.
Cloninger, who was arrested Thursday and appeared in court for the first time Friday, told district employees to “figure this out” and to do it quietly and internally, threatening that it would otherwise be a “career killer,” according to an affidavit from a Longview Police Department investigator. A district employee was also told that the likely recourse for two students accused of a series of sexual assaults would be short-term suspensions, according to the affidavit.
Cloninger faces a felony charge of tampering with a witness, along with misdemeanor charges of failure to report and obstructing a law enforcement officer. During Friday’s hearing in Cowlitz County Superior Court in Kelso, Washington, Cloninger spoke only briefly to confirm her identity before posting bail later that day. She was ordered not to have contact with Longview students or witnesses named in the case and is scheduled to return to court June 10 for arraignment.
District administrators never made a report of the incidents to law enforcement or the state, despite multiple staff members expressing concerns about Cloninger’s decision to keep the matter under wraps, according to accounts detailed in the document. All of the officials involved are beholden to Washington’s mandatory reporting laws.
The superintendent’s decisions did not stem from any lack of information. Charles Paul Beckel, assistant principal at Mark Morris High School, had immediately launched an investigation when he learned of the incidents on Jan. 29. The investigation included interviews with both the victims and the suspects, and went on for nearly two weeks.
According to police, district staff first learned of the alleged assaults Jan. 29 — 11 days before police were contacted by one of the victims’ parents. A school resource officer at MMHS was never fully briefed on the alleged crimes, officials later told police.
The internal investigation happened with the encouragement of Cloninger and Andrew Schoonover, executive director of student services at LSD. Beckel later told police that both higher-ups at the district were kept up-to-date on the details, but Cloninger explicitly opposed making a report to law enforcement; one staff member said she even took umbrage with his use of the terms “hazing” and “systemic” to describe the abuse.
According to the probable cause statement, when the allegations were first brought to Cloninger’s attention, she told the principal and two other district staff members that they were not obligated to report the incidents to police at that point and would handle the investigation internally.
On Feb. 4, as rumors began to spread on social media, Cloninger told district spokesman Rick Parrish to go to Mark Morris High and get “messaging” out to families regarding the investigation, according to police. After speaking with Beckel and MMHS Principal Aaron Whitright about the investigation, Parrish said he called Cloninger back and told her that he’d been “blind-sided” by the details of the incident, saying they seemed “different and bigger” than she’d told him. He suggested getting the district’s attorney involved.
Not long after Parrish suggested that, the affidavit says, Cloninger called to speak with Beckel, Whitright and Parrish all at once.
“She then told them, ‘Look guys, we’re not going to put anything in writing on this’ … She then directed Aaron (Whitright) and Paul (Beckel) to call the parents involved and relay to them that they had done an investigation and had taken appropriate disciplinary steps,” the affidavit claims.
Cloninger told the three officials that they would not call the attorney because she was “not going to be told to do something” she didn’t want to do.
“She followed that with, ‘Look guys, at this point social media has already got rumors going, tell the kids on the team we don’t want any more rumors, don’t talk about this,'” the affidavit says. “She then followed that by saying, ‘Aaron, you better figure this out, you better do it right because this is a career killer.’ Rick (Parrish) explained that Aaron stood up and physically kicked the desk out of frustration.”
Court documents say that when staff members raised concerns about transparency and reporting the allegations to police, Cloninger repeatedly dismissed or suppressed those discussions.
But the rumors online continued to spread. On Feb. 5, officials at the Longview Police Department reached out to Cloninger, but the superintendent told them that “there had been an incident that had been investigated and handled internally.”
A few days later, on Feb. 8, MMHS sent out a letter to families saying that “false rumors and speculation of what occurred are harmful to our students and undermine the feeling of safety in our school.” The letter also said the district had already investigated the allegations and issued “appropriate consequences.”
Finally, on Feb. 9, one of the victims’ parents called police to report the sexual assault, prompting LPD to launch an investigation. On Feb. 10, police arrested two students accused of sexually assaulting younger teammates on the basketball team.
Serving a search warrant on Feb. 12, police found Beckel’s notes detailing the school’s own investigation up to that point. They concluded that school officials — up to and including Cloninger — were fully aware of the details of the assaults as early as Jan. 29.
Even after police got involved, the affidavit claims, Cloninger slow-walked information. She allegedly directed an official to gather communications related to the investigation, which were being sought by LPD, but did not immediately hand them over. It took another search warrant on March 20 for police to discover that trove of information.
“Karen (Cloninger) stifled multiple employees from doing the right thing and reporting to law enforcement and told them to stand down, their behavior was off-putting, and that if they didn’t handle things ‘right’ their careers could be over,” the arresting officer concluded in the affidavit. “Karen specifically withheld information from law enforcement for over a month, despite being served with a search warrant that had been signed by a judge.”
During Friday’s hearing, Clark County Deputy Prosecutor Toby Krauel argued the case involved “a plethora of information about the suppression and manipulation of facts and information that slowed down law enforcement’s ability to timely and aggressively investigation sexual assaults against children in this community.”
Cloninger’s attorney, Jonny McMullen, disputed the allegations in court.
“Karen has never wanted to do anything but address these issues,” McMullen said. “She’s not hiding from these issues, quite the opposite, your honor.”
Outside the court, McMullen added: “Obviously we are fighting the charges. We are not in agreement with what’s been indicated so far.”
Schoonover likewise faces charges, in his case for failure to report and making a false or misleading statement to a public servant.