STARKVILLE – A man worked for nearly three years in the Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated School District while he was under indictment for child sex charges with victims as young as 12.
As far as school district officials knew, Anthony Caldiero had a clean record. Before his hire, he was fingerprinted for a criminal background check that came back clear.
Caldiero, 48, also known as AJ Vega, was sentenced June 25 to 30 years in prison after a Webster County jury convicted him of statutory rape, two counts of sexual battery and one count of touching a child for lustful purposes, according to a court judgement provided by Circuit Clerk Wanda Robinson.
Caldiero’s employment with SOCSD ended June 30, Communications Director Haley Montgomery confirmed.
Webster County Sheriff’s Office arrested Caldiero in November 2021, booking him in the county jail. He was booked again after a grand jury indicted him in May 2022.
With each booking, Webster County Chief Deputy Andrew Banks said Caldiero should have been fingerprinted and those prints entered into the National Criminal Information Center database.
But before SOCSD hired Caldiero as the assistant wrestling coach in October 2022, he passed the required background check, Montgomery said. District officials had no knowledge of the pending charges.
Caldiero remained in the coaching position until becoming a tech support specialist for the district in July 2023, Montgomery confirmed.
“When he was hired, we followed our normal protocol as required by the state for all background checks, and I can confirm … that he cleared the background check,” Montgomery said. “… All we know is that we sent the background check through, and it came back clear. … This is just a normal process that we go through every day.”
State law requires public school districts to use fingerprints for background checks. The prints are submitted to the state Criminal Information Center, managed by the state Department of Public Safety, to be checked against the Mississippi Criminal History System database. If the check doesn’t result in any disqualifications, like a felony conviction or a guilty plea, the fingerprints are forwarded to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for a national database check.
How Caldiero’s charges were not flagged remains unclear. Banks said the arrest and indictment should have shown up in the report.
Calls to DPS went unreturned by press time. The Dispatch also emailed the department’s public affairs department for comment.
According to Caldiero’s LinkedIn profile, SOCSD was his first job in a school district.
Investigating what happened
Banks said he arrested Caldiero back in 2021 after a forensic interview conducted by Child Protective Services resulted in an accusation that Caldiero had touched a 12-year-old girl in a sexual manner.
“We made the charges then, and come to find out, he had also done it (to) another girl several years prior in Webster County as well,” Banks told The Dispatch.
Banks said fingerprinting inmates when they’re booked into the jail is standard procedure. He said he was unaware of any concerns about Caldiero’s booking process until the school district contacted the sheriff’s office after the sentencing.
“I wasn’t really involved in the booking process,” Banks said. “I arrested him, and then handed him off to the jailers to do what they were going to do. But I wouldn’t say that there’s no possible way that there was a mistake. It’s possible there’s a mistake anywhere up the chain, but I can’t say it definitively one way or the other.”
Banks said the sheriff’s office is looking into what could have gone wrong, but with two jail administrators having cycled through since Caldiero’s 2021 arrest, it’s hard to trace the exact breakdown.
He confirmed the jail does have a set of Caldiero’s prints on file, but he isn’t sure when they were taken.
“We had a different jail administrator and a different chief deputy at that time, so I don’t know who fingerprinted him or what the process was back then, but I know I do have a set of fingerprints on him.”
Banks said “there were certainly some issues” with the jail administrator at the time, but he doesn’t remember any specific incidents when there was an issue with the booking process. But he feels confident the current administration is abiding by standard procedures as the issue remains under investigation.
“We’ve got a new jail administrator now. She’s pretty good at handling all … the back-end stuff – the fingerprints and stuff like that,” Banks said. “She’s been a lot more on the reins, and I’m not throwing anybody under the bus or anything like that.”
Montgomery told The Dispatch that SOCSD does not intend to change any of its protocols for pre-employment background checks.
McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.
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