KENOSHA, Wis. — Friday morning, a terminated Kenosha middle school teacher was criminally charged.
Christian Enwright, who previously worked at KTEC West in the Kenosha Unified School District, is charged with 22 counts of disorderly conduct after allegedly inappropriately communicating with a student.
It's a story that's overwhelmed the Kenosha community for weeks now. Even catching the attention of two attorneys, Michael Karp and Bob Welcenbach.
The two attorneys reached out to Jenna Rae after seeing her coverage and are representing the middle school student and her family in a civil lawsuit they plan to file next week.
Karp and Welcenbach spoke exclusively to Rae about the lawsuit they're filing against KUSD and Enwright.
"When you look at it objectively, this individual should not be around children. We're happy to see that there's 22 disorderly conduct charges, but obviously, this goes way beyond disorderly conduct," Karp said.
That's why Karp and his partner, Welcenbach, said they're working on litigation.
"The school district is gonna have allegations against them of 1983 claims, which are like civil rights claims. There will be other claims of negligence, such as negligence supervision and training retention. They didn't fire him right away. And, then there will be claims against the teacher individually," Welcenbach explained.
The family of the middle schooler whom Enwright was allegedly inappropriately Snapchatting for months wasn't ready to talk Friday.
"I think the family's overwhelmed right now. They're happy to see that the teacher was terminated," Karp said. "They wanna see accountability and they wanna be assured that when they send their kid to school, that they don't have to fear sending their kid into a classroom with a predator."
Accountability on all fronts, since this is not the first time a KUSD employee has been accused and criminally charged with inappropriately interacting with students.
"This is not a personnel issue. This is a systemic issue at this point, and they deserve answers, and they deserve assurances that this is never going to happen again because it never should've happened in the first place," Karp added.
Court records show Enwright has obtained counsel. We tried calling the attorneys listed and never heard back.
"We wanna make sure that there's a system in place so that this never will happen to anyone else again, and that there's a reporting procedure or some other mechanism that if this does start to happen, it can be addressed right away," Welcenbach said.
Although Enwright has been criminally charged, he does not have a warrant out for his arrest. He does have a summons, which means he's required to show up to his initial court appearance on Wednesday.
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