Student journalist had to go through Arizona to get Missouri documents.

I was 11-years-old when the details of the most sordid story I have reported played out at a college I had never heard of. Nine years later, I was news editor of the Index at Truman State University in Kirksville, Mo., digging up documents using open-records laws from a state a thousand miles away. These records revealed a huge ethical misstep by Truman's administration in 1992-93 that possibly resulted in the sexual assault of seven teenage girls in Arizona a decade later.

My work on the story began in September 2002 when a detective with the Flagstaff, Ariz., police department called to ask me for copies of the Index archives from 1992 and 1993. She said she was looking for any stories about the departure of a former women's swimming and diving coach named Charles A. Arabas. I found a November 1992 story that reported Arabas had ceased coaching the team but gave no reason for his departure, citing only "personal reasons." I called the Index alumnus who had written the story, Rob Schneider, who at the time was working as weekend sports editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He said most people at the university at the time suspected something shady about Arabas' leaving the team, but no one said anything because the team was doing well.

I called the Flagstaff detective back to tell her I had found the story she had requested in our archives, but I asked her why she wanted it. She said the Flagstaff police, along with the Northern Arizona University Police Department, was investigating charges of sexual abuse against Arabas. She said after leaving Truman (then called Northeast Missouri State University), Arabas went on to work as the Aquatic Center Director at NAU. He also coached a co-ed high school swimming team in the facility and had been accused of sexually abusing several of the girls on the team.

I began investigating. I looked at all old Index articles regarding Arabas, even routine stories about swim meets. I looked in yearbooks, and, knowing that I would be defeated, asked Truman's general counsel Warren Wells to see Arabas' personnel file. As I assumed, I was denied access to the file pursuant Missouri Sunshine Law Chapter 610.021, No. 13. But I had a glimmer of hope when Wells told me the NAU police department had been in touch with him about the file.

I sat back and waited for a few months as Arabas was arrested and formally charged with 14 counts of sexual abuse and five counts of sexual misconduct with a minor. He was in custody for a month from late November to December 2002 and was released on bond. I continued to bide my time, calling weekly to see if the NAUPD had subpoenaed any Truman documents. In early February 2003, an NAU investigator told me they had subpoenaed and received Arabas' personnel record from his 1985 to 1992 tenure at Truman.

I didn't know if the fact that the records were now in Arizona meant I could get my hands on them, but I tried anyway. I placed an information request with the NAUPD, which, to my surprise, was granted immediately. About two weeks and $25 in copying and shipping costs later, I had 600 pages of confidential files I never would have had access to in Missouri, including Arabas' complete and extensive personnel file from Truman as well as all Flagstaff and NAU police reports on the case. The records came on a Monday, and my deadline was Wednesday. I began sorting and highlighting like crazy. What I found shocked and sickened me.

Arabas' Truman file contained pages of explicit complaints from three female divers who accused him of touching them inappropriately. Each one said she was intimidated into succumbing to massage sessions from Arabas, ostensibly to work out sore muscles, during which time he would touch their breasts and genitals. One woman even said she put in a tampon before every massage session to prevent Arabas from entering her. The women said they were afraid that if they did not succumb to the massages, Arabas would take their scholarships away, forcing them to leave college. Once the women discovered the same thing was happening to all three of them, they filed a complaint with the university.

Arabas' supervisor, Cornelis W. Koutstaal, the head of the division of human potential and performance, conducted an investigation into the sexual harassment allegations and concluded in a Dec. 4, 1992, letter that "Mr. Arabas has been seriously at fault." At that time, Jack Magruder, former vice president for academic affairs (and university president at the time I wrote the story), put Arabas on probation and barred him from contact with the swimming and diving team and female students.

In February 1993, Truman administrators made a grave ethical mistake. To avoid a potential lawsuit from Arabas, they agreed not to resolve the sexual harassment allegations and recommend him to future employers. A Feb. 23, 1993, letter from Ray Klinginsmith, the university's former general counsel and current Adair County commissioner, said, "The university will hold in abeyance (Arabas') appeal of the findings of sexual harassment, which will have the effect of leaving the appeal on file with the final question of the sexual harassment charges unresolved by mutual agreement."

The letter went on to say how the university should reply if a future employer of Arabas asked about the allegations: "A further response will be that Chuck (Arabas) already had paid a price for the allegations and that he has been sensitized to the power of sexual harassment complaints. Therefore, it is believed he will hereafter avoid any ambiguous behavior in which his motives can be questioned." The Index used the latter statement as a pull quote to emphasize the irony that Arabas was facing 19 charges of sexual abuse.

Arabas was hired at NAU in the summer of 1993, presumably with Truman references. He was charged with sexual abuse there nine years later, although one girl indicated he started abusing her as early as 1996.

My findings of the Truman connection to this ostensibly unrelated case would not have been possible without Arizona's generous open records laws. Chapter 39, section 121 of the Arizona Revised Statutes states: "Public records and other matters in the custody of any officer shall be open to inspection by any person at all times during office hours."

When Arabas' personnel file was subpoenaed, it became part of a case file in Coconino County, Ariz., and therefore became a public record open for my inspection.

Coconino County Attorney Terry Hance said Wells, Truman's general counsel, told Hance he was quite unhappy to find out I got the personnel file.

"The attorney at Truman gasped," Hance said.

When I interviewed Wells after receiving the records, he refused to comment on anything in them.

"We never intended for these records to be made public," Wells said.

The records were made public, however, and I believe the revelation of such an ethical lapse will cause Truman administrators to make much smarter and more moral decisions in the future. I think I did my journalistic job as a watchdog, even if the event I was watching over took place while I was still in junior high.

Editor's Note: The following is a first-person account by the Missouri Student Journalist of the Year about the story that won her the award.

Sarah St. John is editor-in-chief of the Truman State University Index. She will graduate from Truman in May with a bachelor of arts degree in communication (journalism). She has been hired as a reporter for the Olathe News, a newspaper in the Kansas City suburb of Olathe, Kan.