The Chicago Public Schools inspector general has reopened an investigation into Hilario Dominguez, a candidate for Chicago Board of Education president, months after closing an earlier inquiry into his conduct, the Tribune has learned.
CPS Inspector General Philip Wagenknecht confirmed the reopening early Friday evening but would not comment on the nature of the allegations.
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“We issued a ‘not substantiated’ report earlier this year,” he said in a phone call. “We’ve now received additional information and are following up on this.”
Last month Dominguez’s attorney, former Cook County Commissioner Larry Suffredin, provided the Tribune a June email from the inspector general’s office closing a case into Dominguez, saying it “did not find sufficient evidence” of “inappropriate interactions with a CPS student in 2017 while working at the Resurrection Project.”
Friday’s statement did not say why the case was reopened, but the Tribune spoke with the woman, now 26, in a sit-down interview. The Tribune is not naming her because she was a minor at the time of the incident.
Dominguez, most recently deputy political director for the Chicago Teachers Union, has faced past allegations about his time at The Resurrection Project nonprofit that have resurfaced during his campaign.
“I understand why allegations like these are taken seriously. They should be. I took them seriously, too,” Dominguez wrote last month. “I have answered the questions, participated in the processes, respected investigations, and the result, multiple times, is that this is unfounded. Accountability means something in both directions. People deserve to be heard when they raise concerns, and the documented outcomes of due process must matter too.”
In 2017, according to an internal statement written by an employee and obtained by the Tribune, a 17-year-old girl in the nonprofit’s summer program told her “there was inappropriate language and behavior from a TRP staff member, Hilario Dominguez.”
The employee, housing counselor Paloma Rodriguez, wrote the report in 2018, after both Dominguez and the teen had left the organization.
“The behavior did escalate to a point where she became uncomfortable and came to me about it,” Rodriguez wrote. According to the report, the girl said Dominguez “was alone with her on more than one occasion and would offer rides home” and directed “questions and comments about her dating life” at her.
The woman told the Tribune she was enrolled in the city’s youth summer jobs program in 2017 as an organizer at The Resurrection Project, with Dominguez serving as a coordinator.
Dominguez was driving her to a work event when he asked her what type of men she was into, she said. He was 24 at the time.
A week or two later, she said she was walking into the nonprofit’s office when Dominguez wrapped his arms around her waist on the lobby floor and swung her body around back and forth, her feet dangling above the ground, she said.
“My breasts, my legs, everything was pressed against his body,” she said. “My feet were off the ground. I was completely not in control at that point. That’s what felt very terrible. I tend to shrink in those moments.”
The woman showed the Tribune what she said was a text message from Dominguez a year later acknowledging “the allegations.”
“I didn’t know my running would spin off into that and want to apologize for any negative effects it may have had on you and/or your family,” Dominguez wrote, per a screenshot of the message she provided the Tribune. “If you are open to it, I’d like to talk and sort through all this.”
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The woman said she didn’t respond. Dominguez did not answer questions about the alleged correspondence.
Besides Rodriguez, the Tribune also spoke with two former Resurrection Project staffers who, according to Rodriguez’s report, learned of Dominguez’s purported behavior that summer. Madeline Cruz, the supervisor to Rodriguez’s direct boss, confirmed that she discussed those allegations, as did another adult staffer.
“I know that there was this very immediate, motherly instinct of, ‘That’s very inappropriate, should not be happening,’” Rodriguez said in a phone interview.
Asked about the woman’s account of that summer, Suffredin said: “Mr. Dominguez denies the accuracy of the facts contained in your questions and wants you to be on notice.”
“These proven false allegations should not continue to be used to destroy Mr. Dominguez’s character or professional accomplishments for a cheap political attack,” Suffredin wrote in a letter to the Tribune. “Mr. Dominguez is a gifted teacher and organizer who has helped many students achieve their potential to be better educated people. The young women involved in these allegations accomplished several complex projects while working with Mr. Dominguez.”
After this article’s publication, CTU’s legal team informed members it will represent Dominguez throughout the reopened OIG case, and that union membership will continue campaigning for him. “We take allegations seriously and we take due process seriously,” the email message sent out to CTU members on Sunday says.
In his statement, Dominguez blamed one of the woman’s relatives, who ran against him in a previous election, as the source of what he claimed were “weaponized rumors.” That relative denied any involvement in spreading the allegations as part of their political campaign against Dominguez.
The top watchdog’s statement this Friday reopening the investigation did not elaborate on why, but the woman told the Tribune she was surprised to learn about the earlier finding when she had never sat down for an interview. She has since reached out to the inspector general’s office, she said.
Resurrection Project CEO Raul Raymundo did not respond to multiple inquiries about how the allegations were handled by the nonprofit. The nonprofit’s spokesperson, Sylvia Ortiz-Cooper, wrote in an email statement that “as a matter of policy,” she could only verify Dominguez’s duration of employment: June 2017 to April 2018.
The woman, in her sit-down with the Tribune, said she has decided to speak out because she was concerned by Dominguez’s lack of accountability as he seeks public office for a system serving young people. But she was also tired of other people telling her story without her.
“In the situation with Hilario picking me up, it was loss of control, no autonomy,” she said. “I just want to have a locus of control of myself now, and that’s all I can do.”