Marvin Lovett was a trusted mentor to students at Johnson Elementary School. He also was a pedophile.
Lovett used a camera hidden in his apartment closet to make secret pornographic videotapes of students, police and school reports show. He plied boys with cash and gym shoes as he destroyed their childhoods.
Shot to death in April 2000 by a teenage student he abused for five years – since the boy was 12 – Lovett has been accused in lawsuits of sexually abusing at least 19 boys in the North Lawndale community.
It is the largest known case of sexual abuse involving a Chicago Public Schools worker, volunteer or vendor in recent decades, one that led to $2.7 million in legal settlements earlier this year. Yet no one at CPS was ever held accountable for allowing a dangerous sexual predator to volunteer and work in the West Side school.
Now a Tribune investigation has uncovered a 58-page case manager’s report from the CPS inspector general’s office in which four CPS employees told investigators they had raised concerns with the school’s principal, Mattie Tyson, about Lovett’s interactions with boys.