A group of Chicago alderpersons is calling for an outside investigation into sexual harassment allegations against school board president candidate Hilario Dominguez.
A letter from 16 members of the City Council urges Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul to open an investigation into Dominguez, after the Chicago Public Schools Office of Inspector General closed its recently reopened investigation and cleared Dominguez of any wrongdoing.
"This process was tainted from the start. The Mayor's hand-picked CPS Inspector General rushed a finding to meet the deadline he publicly demanded, sending a devastating message to every girl weighing whether to report abuse," the alders wrote.
The investigation into Dominguez, a former political coordinator of the Chicago Teachers Union and the CTU's endorsed candidate in the race for school board president, stems from 2017 allegations of sexual harassment when he was working for The Resurrection Profit, an immigrant rights nonprofit.
The Chicago Tribune has reported a former CPS student claims Dominguez asked her about her dating life and picked her up while they were alone in 2017 while she was volunteering with The Resurrection Project.
The woman, now 26, took issue with the handling of the investigation into her allegations and accused the Chicago Public Schools Office of Inspector General of failing to take action for five years, the Chicago Tribune reported.
In a letter to the OIG quoted by the Chicago Tribune, the woman wrote that she was enrolled in the Chicago youth summer jobs program when she herself was 17, as an organizer with the Pilsen neighborhood-based nonprofit The Resurrection Project, the Tribune reported. Dominguez was 24 and working as a coordinator at the nonprofit at the time.
The woman said Dominguez was driving her to a work event when he asked her what kind of men she was interested in, the Tribune reported.
The woman also said Dominguez put his arms around her and picked her up to twirl her when no one else was around, the newspaper reported. She said her feet were off the ground and her breasts and legs were "pressed against [Dominguez's] body," the newspaper reported.
The woman's attorney released the following statement in full, saying she is renewing her call for accountability and is "not going to be silenced":
"Like so many victims and survivors undermined by a broken system before me, I know what happened to me, and I am not going to be silenced. While I am disappointed in the failure of this report to affirmatively verify my experience, it certainly does not exonerate Hilario Dominguez, or 'clear him in full,' as he claims. This process has been deeply flawed from the beginning. There is no reason why we should be having this conversation now, nine years after the fact, and five years after a community member filed an initial complaint with the OIG. There is no reason the OIG should have closed the complaint in June without ever having interviewed me. Nor is there any valid reason that the OIG should have informed my harasser of the results of the investigation two full months before they informed me of the same news. All of this must be addressed. I renew my call for accountability and an outside investigation into how this investigation was pursued."
Dominguez said his relationship to the then-teenage girl was one of a mentor and mentee. Dominguez also denied any inappropriate behavior during a forum recently.
Dominguez has also faced allegations of inappropriate behavior when he was working as a CPS special education teacher.
Back in 2021, Dominguez was the subject of a complaint by a fellow teacher who alleged that Dominguez made a Nazi salute and called the teacher "Hitler" in front of students, multiple published reports note. Dominguez emphasized that the teacher withdrew the complaint, and that what really happened was that he stood up for his students in the face of racism.
However, he did not deny the incident ever happened.
Mayor Brandon Johnson has maintained support for Dominguez despite the allegations against him. The Chicago Teachers Union has had relatively little to say about the allegations against Dominguez.
