Arrest report says North Las Vegas teacher thought sex with student would not get him ‘into trouble’

A North Las Vegas substitute high school teacher and football coach told police he did not think he would get in trouble for having sex with a student in part because she was 18 years old, according to his arrest report.

The Clark County School District Police Department report on the Wednesday arrest of Ryan Davis, 29, said he told police he had sex with the Legacy High School senior because she told him she would be moving to California before the end of winter break.

“Davis said he thought, ‘She’s not going back to school, she’s an 18 year old, can’t get into trouble for that,’” the arrest report said.

He was arrested on charges of sexual misconduct with a student after district police received reports of an affair through anonymous tips to faculty members. The arrest occurred just three days after Davis celebrated the new year with the birth of his second daughter — the first baby born in a Las Vegas Valley hospital in 2017.

Davis has been a football coach at Legacy High for three years and began to work there as a Jobs for America’s Graduates instructor at the beginning of the school year. He and the student began communicating on social media apps Facebook and Snapchat and had sex two times in the days after Christmas, the arrest report said.

On both occasions, the student said Davis picked her up in his vehicle and they had sex on his back seat, according to the arrest report.

According to the Nevada Revised Statutes, it’s illegal for a school employee or volunteer over the age of 21 to engage in sexual conduct with a pupil who is 16 years of age or older, who has not received a high school diploma, a general educational development certificate or an equivalent document and who is enrolled in or attending the school where the person is employed.

Under current Nevada law, the age of consent for any form of heterosexual sex is 16. And anyone older than 18 is free to undertake in any form of consensual sexual activity in private with anyone else, regardless of gender. The charge of sexual misconduct with a student, however, was added to the revised statutes in 1997 to apply to older students; in 2015, it was tweaked to include all students over the age of 16.

“Regardless of age, in any situation with a power dynamic like that — a student and a professional — there’s a power imbalance, which puts one person at a disadvantage,” said Daniele Dreitzer, executive director for the Rape Crisis Center in Las Vegas. “It can create an extremely coercive and abusive situation.”

In the interview with police, Davis at first denied the rumors of him being in a relationship with a student, and also denied having students, other than football players, in his car, the arrest report said.

He eventually, through the course of the interview, told police that he made a mistake, according to his arrest report. He said that while over winter break, he was “overwhelmed with school, his job, his baby” and “dealing with his pregnant girlfriend’s emotions,” leaving him no time to decompress, the arrest report said.

Once he discovered that the student was not moving to California — after the second time they had sex — he told her they couldn’t be together, but she continued to contact him, the arrest report said.

The student refused to allow police to complete a forensic exam of her phone, the arrest report said. She said that no one had done anything to her against her will, the arrest report said.

Contact Wesley Juhl at wjuhl@reviewjournal.com and 702-383-0391. Follow @WesJuhl on Twitter. Contact Natalie Bruzda at nbruzda@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3897. Follow @NatalieBruzda on Twitter.