How Durham school officials allegedly concealed evidence in abuse investigation
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- Three Durham school administrators face 17 charges of perjury and obstruction.
- One is a principal at an elementary school where an autistic student was allegedly abused.
- The officials are accused of lying to police and in court and withholding evidence.
A Durham Public Schools principal and two administrators worked for months to lie to investigators after a photo surfaced of a student with autism tied to a chair, court records allege.
Tounya Wright, principal of Eno Valley Elementary School; Ayesha Hunter, the school system’s senior executive director of employee relations; and Tanya Giovanni, the deputy superintendent for administrative, legal and compliance services, face a combined 17 charges of obstructing a criminal investigation and perjury, according to court records and police.
The charges are tied to the school system’s investigation of alleged child abuse by two Eno Valley educators, which The News & Observer previously reported last February.
Police were called to the school Nov. 25, 2024, when Wright told officers a photograph of the student tied to a chair with rope had been anonymously slipped under her door three days prior, court documents state.
Detectives now believe Wright lied about how she received the photo and knew about it longer than that, and that Giovanni and Hunter worked to conceal her failure to report the incident to police immediately.
In fact, a December search of DPS headquarters “revealed that formal investigatory files, handwritten interview notes, and digital evidence did exist and were in the possession of DPS officials at the very time they were denying their existence in court,” a detective wrote.
Here’s what we know.
School janitor reports incident
In November 2024, a janitor at the elementary school allegedly saw a 6-year-old autistic student tied to a chair with rope in her Exceptional Children classroom, according to search warrants. The janitor took two photos with her cellphone and shared them with Wright at an unspecified point within the next week.
Wright called Durham police the afternoon of Nov. 25, 2024, a Monday, to report the allegations, court documents show. But email records show she was aware of the photos as early as Nov. 22, 2024, the Friday before she contacted law enforcement, and the school’s secretary testified she informed Wright of the photos Nov. 18, the Monday before police were called.
The emails showed Wright contacted the assistant superintendent for human resources about the photos that Friday afternoon, according to search warrants. That employee then forwarded the email to Hunter an hour later and said she’d notified the school system’s public affairs department and the superintendent, according to search warrants.
North Carolina law requires anyone 18 or older suspecting a juvenile has been or is being abused to immediately make a report to law enforcement. Failure to do so is a Class 1 misdemeanor.
By Friday evening, Wright had emailed the two accused instructors, asking them to meet with Hunter at the school system’s headquarters on Monday morning, according to court documents. Yet no one reported the allegations to police until someone at the school called 911 on Monday afternoon.
Durham police responded to the school on Milton Road just before 5 p.m. Nov. 25, 2024, according to court documents. It’s not clear who dialed 911. Wright appeared to swipe through a text message thread on her cellphone as she told officers she’d received the photo under her door “late” in the afternoon of Nov. 22.
“Principal Wright states to officers that this [what’s depicted in the photo] is ‘against the law,’” a detective wrote in a search warrant. “Principal Wright states during this interview that Human Resources conducted an investigation prior to contacting law enforcement.”
The N&O isn’t naming the two instructors accused of abuse because prosecutors dismissed one instructor’s charges, while the other instructor has never been criminally charged.
Wright would go on to tell the student’s mother and police on multiple occasions that the photograph had been slipped anonymously under her door the afternoon of Nov. 22. In the interim, the two instructors were placed on administrative leave. They both resigned Dec. 3, 2024.
One of the instructors was indicted in May 2025 on charges of felony child abuse inflicting serious physical injury, assault on a child under 12 years of age and misdemeanor assault on an individual with a disability, according to search warrants. But as the case continued, her defense attorney, prosecutors and law enforcement alike all struggled to get evidence from the school system.
By June 2025, lawyers were so frustrated that the Durham County District Attorney’s Office and Kellie Mannette, the instructor’s defense attorney, filed a joint motion to compel the school system to turn over the requested records, according to court documents.
In a meeting that summer with the detective and others involved in the case, Giovanni said the human resources department didn’t create investigation files or reports in these situations, according to search warrants. She did tell the detective she would turn over any statements the instructors had made to human resources during the school system’s investigation.
Hunter, meanwhile, repeatedly said the assistant superintendent for human resources, who had since retired, had led the investigation into the alleged abuse, detectives wrote in the warrants.
Detectives learned of the true source of the photos — the janitor — in July 2025, when the child’s mother shared a tip she’d received, according to search warrants.
But Hunter, Giovanni and Wright reportedly stuck to their narrative — that the photos had been slipped under the door — throughout the summer and fall, including in sworn testimony during an October hearing, search warrants allege. During that hearing, Hunter testified that she didn’t have any notes from the investigation and that she’d seen Wright hand a printed photo to police officers, search warrants state.
But the school secretary testified that Wright didn’t receive a printed photo — instead, the secretary had texted them to her after being notified by the janitor, according to search warrants. The principal was allegedly aware the photos had come from the janitor.
The charges against the instructor were dismissed by the District Attorney’s Office on Nov. 18, 2025, according to court documents.
Police seize files and documents
In December 2025, the retired assistant superintendent for human resources, who Wright had first contacted about the allegations, shared her account of the investigation with police, according to search warrants. She stated that written statements from employees subject to school system investigations were standard, and that she had not been present for Hunter’s interview of the two accused instructors.
The retired employee also shared that the school system kept physical investigation files, according to search warrants. That prompted a Dec. 18, 2025, search of the school system’s headquarters.
Police would ultimately seize at least 16 physical files and documents relevant to the investigation, according to search warrants.
That included typed statements from the two instructors, handwritten notes from witness interviews, the instructors’ personnel files and subpoenas, according to search warrants. Police also found a shred bin containing:
- A letter from the janitor alleging she’d been harassed by another staffer, “with documentation that she was instructed to avoid the police and speak to HR.”
- Case notes.
- “Written statements from teachers accused of child abuse for other cases investigated by the Durham Police Department.”
Officers also recovered from Giovanni’s files an Aug. 21, 2025, affidavit signed by Wright claiming the photo was physically printed and slipped under her door, according to the warrants.
“The date of the affidavit … suggests it was created in response to the Defense’s Motion to Compel and the subsequent Consent Order, yet it was never produced as part of the discovery,” a detective wrote.
In the affidavit, Wright reported she’d thrown out the original photograph after making a digital copy, which was why she couldn’t produce it to police.
Ignoring proof of innocence?
The instructor who’d been criminally charged told police this month that Wright called her at 5:30 p.m. Nov. 22, 2024, to question her about the alleged abuse, according to search warrants.
“[The instructor] stated that Principal Wright claimed she had received photos indicating the student was tied to a chair ‘today’ (referring to Nov. 22),” the warrant says. “[The instructor] immediately refuted this to Principal Wright, stating she had been in the classroom all day and the incident did not occur. The child was also not wearing the same outfit that day.”
When the instructor met with Hunter on the next school day after Wright’s report to police, Hunter displayed the photo on her computer monitor, according to the warrant.
“[The instructor] immediately identified exculpatory evidence, informing Hunter that the child was wearing a yellow shirt in the photo, which the child had not worn since the beginning of the school year,” the warrant states.
But Hunter reportedly dismissed the instructor’s claim and never mentioned it in the evidence provided to police, according to the warrant. That instructor also hadn’t been at work Nov. 15, 2024, when the photograph was allegedly taken, the warrant states.
Detectives also suspected school administrators deleted records from Class Dojo, an online platform facilitating communication between school staff and parents, that may have been relevant to the case, according to the warrant.
By the time a grand jury signed off on indictments against the administrators Tuesday, the accusations against them would include:
- That Wright told police she first learned of the photo Nov. 22, 2024 “with deceit and intent to defraud, and in secrecy and malice.”
- That Wright told police the photograph was anonymously slipped under her door and she didn’t know who took it “with deceit and intent to defraud, and in secrecy and malice.”
- That Giovanni told police the school system didn’t create investigatory files for such incidents “with deceit and intent to defraud, and in secrecy and malice.”
- That Giovanni testified she didn’t have the instructors’ witness statements “with deceit and intent to defraud, and in secrecy and malice.”
- That Giovanni obstructed justice by failing to disclose relevant evidence in the case.
- That Giovanni obstructed justice by interrupting Hunter and preventing her from speaking during the July 2025 meeting with police and lawyers on the case.
- That Hunter obstructed justice by failing to disclose relevant evidence in the case.
- That Hunter’s accounts of the events of the investigation were shared with police and the court “with decent and intent to defraud, and in secrecy and malice” and “knowing the statement, which was material, to be false.”
All three were arrested Wednesday, with Hunter and Wright posting $5,000 secured bond and Giovanni posting $10,000 secured bond, court records show.
Families and school system staff were notified of the charges in two separate emails sent Wednesday morning by Superintendent Anthony Lewis.
“Because active legal and personnel matters are ongoing, there are limits on what additional details I can share at this time,” Lewis wrote. “What I want to be clear about is this: nothing is more important than the safety and well-being of our students.”
In a statement shared with the media Wednesday afternoon, Lewis said he learned about the allegations when the search warrant was executed Dec. 18.
“I promptly informed the Board of Education and together we launched a thorough investigation into these issues,” he wrote. “The three administrators were suspended with pay on December 19, 2025, pending the outcome of our ongoing review.”
The school system is cooperating with the Durham County District Attorney’s Office, Lewis said.
“The systematic withholding of evidence and fabrication of the investigative timeline by these officials directly compromised the integrity of the criminal case,” Durham police wrote in a news release.
The case remained under investigation as of Wednesday afternoon, police said. Anyone with information is asked to call Investigator Park at 919-560-4440 ext. 2932 or CrimeStoppers at 919-683-1200. Tips can also be submitted online at www.durhamcrimestoppers.org.
NC Reality Check is an N&O series holding those in power accountable and shining a light on public issues that affect the Triangle or North Carolina. Have a suggestion for a future story? Email realitycheck@newsobserver.com.
This story was originally published January 23, 2026 at 5:30 AM with the headline "How Durham school officials allegedly concealed evidence in abuse investigation."
