MIAMI (FL)
WPLG-TV, ABC-10 [Miami FL]
May 10, 2023
By Andrea Torres
Police: Girls say man victimized them while he was their teacher at Catholic private school in Little River, charter school in Overtown
MIAMI – A 29-year-old teacher — who was working at a Jewish private school when police officers arrested him for child sex crimes at a private Catholic school and a charter school — is facing more charges on Wednesday in Miami-Dade County.
Eric Bernard Givens, also known as “Mr G.”, has been at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center since Friday without bond. County jail and court records show that on Wednesday he was facing charges in cases involving three girls.
After his arrest, Scheck Hillel Community School administrators terminated Givens, according to Rabbi Ari Leubitz, who also reported that the first-year teacher had cleared a Florida Department of Law Enforcement background check when they hired him.
Givens is facing criminal charges in cases involving three girls, but there was a fourth girl who had complained about him before. She reported him during her 2018-19 academic school year at St. Mary Cathedral School in Miami’s Little River neighborhood.
Mary Ross Agosta, a spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Miami, wrote in a statement released after Givens’s arrest that administrators at the Catholic school “relieved” Givens from his teaching position “a few months later.”
“The police were immediately notified and investigated the incident, and school officials offered counseling to the student and family members,” Agosta wrote in the statement adding Givens was employed at St. Mary Cathedral School from August 2019 to March 2020.
The new criminal cases involve two other girls who reported Givens abused them while he was their teacher at St. Mary Cathedral School, and a girl who met Givens when he was her teacher at the Theodore R. and Thelma A. Gibson Charter School in Miami’s Overtown neighborhood, records show.
One of the St. Mary Cathedral School victims reported her abuser was her fifth-grade teacher and the other reported he was her third-grade teacher, according to the police reports. The student at Theodore R. and Thelma A. Gibson Charter School was 10 years old, according to police.
Givens tested their boundaries and was able to use cell phones to groom his victims, according to police. Detectives accessed the teacher’s text messages to the charter school student: “Always wanted to date you,” “I wanna see you again,” and “Oh wow I wanna see you bad, according to the police arrest report.
In the two cases involving the Catholic school, Givens is facing seven counts of lewd or lascivious molestation of a child who is younger than 12 years old; seven counts of battery, a misdemeanor; and a charge of lewd and lascivious conduct on a child who is younger than 16 years old, a second-degree felony, records show.
In the case involving the charter school, Givens is facing a misdemeanor charge of offense against students by an authority figure, county records show. He had three warrants out with a magistrate hold on Wednesday for the cases.
Police officers arrested Givens at the Advenir Presidential House Apartments, at 1574 NE 191 St., in Miami-Dade’s Ojus neighborhood, west of the Saint Lawrence Elementary School, which is not related to the cases. Detectives were asking anyone with information about the cases to call Miami-Dade County Crime Stoppers at 305-471-8477.
Read the arrest forms