A former St. Louis Public Schools teacher and coach is facing statutory rape and statutory sodomy charges in Missouri after a Los Angeles molestation case from 2023 prompted a former student to come forward about alleged abuse dating back more than two decades. Kareem Spann, now 49, is accused of forcing himself on a then-15-year-old victim during basketball practice at Peabody Elementary School in November 2004, and of continuing a sexual relationship with the victim through 2007.
The St. Louis Circuit Attorney's Office has charged Spann with three counts of second-degree statutory rape and one count of second-degree statutory sodomy, according to FOX 2. The station reports that Spann, who was around 26 or 27 years old at the time of the first alleged incident, was a licensed teacher at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School beginning in 2002 and through 2006, and later worked at Beaumont High School during the 2006-07 and 2008-09 school years.
The case traces back to Spann's arrest in Burbank, California, in May 2023, when the Los Angeles Police Department took him into custody on felony child molestation charges tied to alleged inappropriate sexual conduct with eighth-grade students at Louis Armstrong Middle School. LAPD publicly released Spann's photo the following month to seek additional victims across his former employment locations, according to LAPD, which said at the time that detectives believed there could be other victims.
How the LA Arrest Led Back to St. Louis
That appeal for victims is what eventually connected LAPD investigators to a St. Louis victim, who contacted an LAPD detective and told investigators the crimes happened between 2004 and 2007, per the probable cause statement cited by the station's report. According to that account, the first alleged incident occurred at Peabody Elementary School, where Spann allegedly forced himself on the victim during basketball practice in November 2004; Peabody, located at 1224 South 14th Street in St. Louis's Near Southside neighborhood, serves Pre-K through fifth-grade students, according to Navigate STL Schools.
The victim also described an incident in the rear parking lot of Central Visual and Performing Arts High School, where Spann is accused of coercing the victim to perform a sex act on him in his vehicle. The magnet school, located at 3125 South Kingshighway Boulevard and enrolling roughly 300 to 400 students, operates as a specialized arts campus within Saint Louis Public Schools, according to Niche. The station's report also states Spann brought the victim to his apartment on Washington Avenue, where he allegedly had sex with the victim on multiple occasions.
Legal Exposure in Two States
Second-degree statutory rape under Missouri Revised Statutes § 566.034 is a Class D felony carrying up to seven years in prison and fines up to $10,000 for a first offense when an adult 21 or older has sexual intercourse with someone under 17, according to Rose Legal Services. Missouri law treats the offense with strict liability, meaning a minor's consent is not a legal defense. The related sodomy count, filed under Missouri Revised Statutes § 566.064, is also a Class D felony punishable by up to seven years for deviate sexual intercourse with a person under 17, per FindLaw.
Missouri's extended statute of limitations for felony sex offenses involving victims 17 or under, under Missouri Revised Statutes § 556.037, allows prosecutions up to 20 years after the offense, or without any time limit for certain major sex crimes, according to RAINN. That extension is what allowed St. Louis prosecutors to file charges in 2026 for conduct alleged to have occurred between 2004 and 2007.
In Los Angeles, Spann was charged in June 2023 with two counts of lewd or lascivious acts on a child under 14 and one misdemeanor count of child molestation in Los Angeles County Superior Court, per the FOX 2 report. Under California Penal Code § 288(a), a conviction for lewd acts on a child under 14 carries a state prison sentence of three, six, or eight years and mandates lifetime sex offender registration, according to FindLaw. Spann is currently awaiting trial in the Los Angeles area and has been on electronic monitoring in that case as of July, while also facing the separate St. Louis charges.
Background Checks and Institutional Gaps
Missouri law under RSMo § 168.133 requires pre-employment fingerprint background checks for all school staff with student access, and the state has operated an automated Rap Back monitoring system since 2016 to alert districts to subsequent arrests, according to Saint Louis Public Schools. That system is designed to help districts monitor current employees, but it relies on timely arrest notifications across state lines — raising questions about whether any prior administrative concerns followed Spann as he moved from Missouri classrooms to a Los Angeles Unified School District campus years later.
Beaumont High School, where Spann worked during the 2006-07 and 2008-09 school years, was a historic North St. Louis public high school founded in 1923 that stopped operating as a traditional high school in 2014 and was later converted into a career and technical education center, according to background compiled from Wikipedia. It remains unclear how Spann moved between school systems in two states, and whether credentialing registries flagged any concerns before his 2023 arrest.
