By GINA B. GOOD

PVT

A front page story in Friday’s PV Times regarding litigation being brought by Pahrump Valley High School’s former Junior ROTC instructor Daniel Hernandez prompted the young woman whom Hernandez was accused of having a sexual relationship with during her senior year, in 2004-2005, to visit the newspaper office and tell her side of the story.

An investigation by the Nye County School District in 2009, when the information became public, concluded the allegations were unsubstantiated, but the girl says the charges are true.

She said the relationship did not turn sexual until a few days after she graduated, but maintains the JROTC instructor was preparing her to accept his sexual overtures while she was still in school.

She also said Hernandez told her what to say to the school officials when they questioned her. “They cleared him of sexual allegations,” she said. “If I had been honest with them, they wouldn’t have. I was at the school when the school district called him in for that meeting and suspended him.

“He couldn’t go on school property, so he had me walk off school property by a block. He picked me up and told me what to tell the people when they called. They told him they were going to call.”

Hernandez dropped her off at home and she waited for the call. “I told them what happens between adults is my business.”

Although she was of age at the time of the school district’s inquiry, she was 16 and a Junior ROTC cadet when she first met Hernandez. She is now 23 and a law student with a two-month old daughter. She claims Hernandez used the high school as a hunting ground for naïve, young girls like her.

“I was flattered that he actually took an interest in me,” she said. “I had self-esteem issues at the time.

“He would call me into his office when I was a student and then conveniently forget what he called me in for. He told me later that he wanted to watch me walk away. He did it so he could see my butt. He admitted to me later that when he watched me walk away, he got [aroused].

“If he hadn’t paid that kind of attention to me, and told me he and his wife were split, I never would have gotten involved with him,” she said.

During her interview, she also said Hernandez gave nicknames to at least two other high school students, calling them “good time” girls but said she had no personal knowledge of his actions toward them.

“Good time alludes to something,” she said, “He had his wife on the side, but would go ape on me if I talked to a guy, even if he was a freshman. Hernandez would call me a name, like ‘whore.’”

A few days after graduating in 2005, she turned 18. “That’s when he first kissed me,” she said, explaining the kiss occurred after he returned from his daughter’s graduation from law school.

“I am younger than his daughter but I didn’t know that at the time,” she said. “I don’t know now if I would call it a relationship, but it went on for about four years. Then I found out he was never split from his wife.”

She said Hernandez, for weeks at a time, would invite her to his house, which she now thinks meant his wife was away, and then “all of a sudden” tell her she couldn’t come over.

She continued to volunteer her time to JROTC at the high school while she was in college and maintains she and Hernandez would “make out all over school.”

The school district did not clear allegations against Hernandez for misusing a school vehicle. The young woman said Hernandez used the school van to take her to movies and shopping in Las Vegas. She said most nights, he drove the van to take her walking or go out into the desert.

She also described other violations of school rules, saying after she graduated, she entered student attendance and grades into the school computer system for Hernandez. School volunteers must be vetted to help teachers and cannot handle personal information. She did not go through that process.

“I wasn’t planning on going public with any of this,” she said. “I was going to testify on the stand, but then I read that article this morning.

“I am upset because Hernandez is suing Robert [Carson] for passing on the information he got from me. I don’t know why Hernandez said the e-mail was forged because I had that information on MySpace.

“He never liked Robert, even when we were just friends. The article in the paper made it sound like it was all Robert’s fault, but Hernandez lost his job because of his actions, not because of Robert Carson’s actions.”

Her affair with Hernandez ended around the time she received her bachelor’s degree in 2009.