Victim’s rights advocate: Rachel Mitchell went easy on pedophile coach

In the early 2000s, Kayleigh Kozak was sexually abused by Joshua Jacobsen, her physical education teacher and soccer coach at Liberty Elementary in Buckeye. At the time, she was 12 and 13 years old. As an adult, she pushed to pass legislation that became known as Kayleigh’s Law, which allows victims of certain sexual crimes to obtain lifetime injunctions against their abusers.

Now, two decades after her abuse, Kozak is fighting another battle in court. In a lawsuit filed in Maricopa County Superior Court in November, Kozak says the Liberty Elementary School District ignored complaints about her abuser before police arrested him. Kozak’s lawsuit also slams the prosecutor who gave Jacobsen a sweetheart plea deal.

That prosecutor is none other than Republican Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell, who was the sex crimes division chief for the county prosecutor’s office at the time.

Mitchell is not a party to the suit, and the county attorney’s office did not respond to a request for comment. Kozak's attorney, William Fischbach, declined an interview request on behalf of his client. But Kozak clearly feels Mitchell, the Liberty Elementary School District and the criminal justice system in general did not do right by her.

Kozak is suing the district for compensatory and punitive damages. The suit does not mention a dollar amount, but a notice of claim to the district asked for $10 million.

Kozak’s lawsuit was spurred by revelations she found in the report of the Buckeye Police Department’s investigation into Jacobsen, which the suit says Kozak didn’t receive until January of this year. The suit claims Mitchell had never given Kozak a copy of the report and that it was only recently that Kozak realized she'd never seen it.

What Kozak saw shocked her. Despite Mitchell’s insistence that “the case against Jacobsen was weak,” the suit says, the police report indicated that Jacobsen’s predatory conduct was known to the school district and that "multiple children and parents corroborated Kozak's allegations against Jacobsen."

Parents told police they reported this misconduct in 2002 and 2003 to a principal for Liberty Elementary. According to the police report, the parents said the school's principal downplayed the incidents, with one parent saying the principal "insinuated all the kids were lying."

“They knew,” the suit says. “Liberty Elementary School knew. They knew about Jacobsen before he sexually abused Kozak.”

Let off easy?

According to the lawsuit, Jacobsen’s infatuation with Kozak was a poorly concealed secret to students and parents at Liberty Elementary, one of seven schools in a district that serves 4,500 students in Buckeye and Goodyear.

Students told investigators that Jacobsen would "look down girls' shirts" while they were doing push-ups in gym class and that he would "pat girls on their butts." One parent claimed to have witnessed this behavior as it was occurring in a class of 20 to 25 girls. Two students noted that Jacobsen especially lavished compliments and attention on Kozak.

But when police questioned then-Liberty principal Nancy Bogart, she defended Jacobsen and dismissed one allegation against him that she said "turned out to be nothing." She claimed there had been "no formal complaint" and no investigation. The principal also characterized one of Jacobsen's accusers as a "rumor spreader" and part of a group of girls that liked to "stir up trouble.”

Asked about the protocol in place to deal with such matters, the principal called in the school district's then-superintendent, Pete Turner, who said he was unaware of any "formal policy" for handling allegations of teacher impropriety, though the lawsuit maintains there was a written policy in place at the time.

Bogart and Turner are not named as defendants in the suit. They could not be reached for comment.

Jacobsen abused Kozak in 2002 and 2003, but police did not investigate Jacobsen until after Kozak enrolled at Xavier College Preparatory Academy in Phoenix, where she reported the abuse to a counselor. Buckeye police then set up a confrontation call with Jacobsen, during which he admitted to fondling Kozak’s breasts and forcing kisses on her, leading to his arrest.

In 2007, Jacobsen pleaded guilty to one count of sexual abuse against a minor under 15 and one count of luring a minor for sexual exploitation, both class 3 felonies. The deal stipulated that the then-32-year-old would receive no more than three years in prison, though he was ultimately sentenced to only nine months in jail with lifetime probation.

When Jacobsen was sentenced, Mitchell was the sex crimes chief for the county attorney’s office. According to the lawsuit, Mitchell told Kozak's parents that the case against Jacobsen was "weak." So, Mitchell would offer a "lenient" plea agreement "to incentivize Jacobsen to plead guilty and thereby allow Mitchell to avoid trial."

The suit states that Mitchell sold the idea of "lifetime probation" to Kozak and her parents as being truly "lifetime," leading to a rude surprise when Jacobsen asked a court to end it. The complaint also alleges that Jacobsen's defense attorney "had worked with Mitchell previously at the county attorney's office."

The stress of reopening old wounds moved Kozak to push for "Kayleigh's Law," which was signed into law by Gov. Doug Ducey in 2021. Though Kozak appeared at a 2022 press conference held by Mitchell to ballyhoo Kayleigh's Law, the two reportedly fell out in 2023 over another Kozak-backed law, and Kozak was disinvited from being the keynote speaker at a victim's rights conference in Phoenix.

Earlier this year, Kozak endorsed Mitchell's GOP primary rival, Gina Godbehere, whom Mitchell handily beat en route to a nine-point general election victory.

Kozak's lawsuit makes a point of stating that despite Mitchell's "history of publicly attacking Kozak," Kozak filed her complaint on Nov. 7, two days after the general election, "to circumvent any claims from Mitchell that Kozak sought to harm" Mitchell's re-election bid.

Secret recording

The lawsuit makes explosive allegations about current Liberty Elementary School Board President Bryan Parks. The suit references a recording of Parks, made by an unnamed parent after the district had been served with Kozak’s notice of claim, in which he allegedly downplayed the seriousness of Kozak’s abuse.

Kozak's suit describes Parks as laughing, stating of the notice of claim, "This is it? I mean, I don't want to minimize it, but it's like, really?"

He adds, "I expected to see penetration or this or that …"

The recording was recently posted to "The Truth About Liberty Elementary School District #25," a private Facebook group. In the recording, a male speaker, identified by the post as Parks, calls himself "one of the top officials in the school district." He then describes reading the notice of claim.

"As board members, because we're defending the school district, I have everything," he says. "I was reading through it, and I'm just like, this seems a little over the top for what happened." He added, "What I see here is a lot of somebody who is not willing to put it behind them and move on in life. It's sad to me."

In emails to Phoenix New Times, Parks said the quotes were from edited recordings that had been taken out of context. According to Parks, some of the quotes were referencing different, more recent incidents in the district related to student-on-student violence.

Parks also claimed that his "private phone conversations with my wife, close friends and family" had been "edited and posted all over social media." He wrote, "I have never heard these recordings. "I don't know who recorded them, and quite a bit is not something I would say publicly to anyone." About the quotes referenced in the lawsuit, he wrote, "I disavow the entire transcription."

Parks noted he joined the board in 2021, while Kozak's complaint regarded abuse that occurred more than 20 years ago.

"It was not my intention to downplay anything," Parks wrote. "This is a serious accusation. I have zero tolerance for any sexual assault of any kind." He added, "I have great respect and admiration for Mrs. Kozak. I'm horrified by what took place."

In a follow-up phone conversation, Parks said his previous cell phone had been compromised and was now in the hands of the FBI. He complained of people going through his garbage and calling Child Protective Services on him, which he blamed on disgruntled employees and others.

"We're making huge changes,” Parks said, “and some people do not like it.”

The district and its governance are sources of community contentiousness. The private Facebook page about the school district is rife with criticism of Parks and the district's current superintendent, Cort Monroe, who took office this year. Monroe was the subject of controversy at a recent meeting of the district board, which voted 3-2 to increase a performance-based bonus to up to 20% of his base pay of $185,000.

Monroe did not respond to a request for comment.