Public court records documenting the investigation of Nicolas Lhermine, the 20-year-old YMCA employee accused of sexual abuse and possession of child pornography, detail how the suspect allegedly lured a 6-year-old girl into the bathroom of a child care facility and forced her to perform a sex act.
The court file also describes how investigators found a number of nude photographs of Lhermine’s alleged 17-year-old female victim – including close-up shots of private parts – on his computer and mobile phone just hours after the younger victim reported the sexual assault.
The incident involving the younger victim took place at the Mt. Madonna YMCA-run child care facility on the campus of Paradise Valley Elementary School in Morgan Hill, where Lhermine worked as a childcare aide, according to court records. It is unclear where Lhermine took the photos of the teen victim.
Lhermine is in custody on charges of oral copulation on a child younger than 10, lewd and lascivious acts with a child under 12 years old, possession of child pornography and production of child pornography. He faces a maximum of life in prison.
All the charges involve three victims, though the court file only includes references to the 6-year-old and 17-year-old victims. The third victim is a 5-year-old girl whom Lhermine allegedly took sexually pictures of while she was under his care at the child care facility.
Furthermore, authorities have said there could be more charges forthcoming against Lhermine, in relation to a 7-year-old girl in his care who revealed he assaulted her after the initial allegations were filed.
“There’s no hurry” to complete the continuing investigation, Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney Stuart Scott said this week. “We’re going to make sure we do it right, and make sure the victims aren’t influenced by the disclosure. So we want to be careful about what statements we make at this point.”
The court file consists of police reports of the investigation, as well as statements from the 6-year-old victim, witnesses and the suspect. The names of the underage victims and other sensitive information are redacted from the report.
Lhermine was arrested by Morgan Hill police July 12, a few hours after the 6-year-old’s parents reported the initial assault. During an initial interview with police Detective Joe Burdick, Lhermine confirmed many details of the child’s account – including that he and the girl were alone in the childcare facility’s bathroom together with the door closed, against YMCA policies, according to the court file. The victim’s father told police the child told him that Lhermine locked the bathroom door while the two were inside.
However, Lhermine denied all the criminal allegations.
While in custody at the police station, Lhermine gave authorities consent to search his home in southwest Morgan Hill, which they did shortly after his arrest. There, they found his laptop computer and mobile phone, from which they subsequently found numerous explicit pictures of the 17-year-old victim, according to the court file. They also confiscated the clothing Lhermine was wearing during the alleged incident involving the 6-year-old.
Lhermine knew the 17-year-old victim, but she was not affiliated with the YMCA, Scott said.
The photographs found by police included images of the teen fully nude, as well as close-up shots of her unclothed vagina, breasts and buttocks, the court file says.
Lhermine has no previous known criminal history, and the court file says the 6-year-old victim’s parents never suspected he might do anything harmful to the child. The child did not have any behavior problems at the YMCA program.
The child, identified as “Jane Doe” in the court file, reported the incident to her mother moments after she picked up the girl from the YMCA program about 5:45 p.m. July 12, the police reports say.
The mother reported it to police about 5:50 p.m., and told her husband – the girl’s father – as soon as she arrived home with the victim.
The parents brought the child to the police station that evening. Investigators interviewed the victim, who repeatedly became upset, sometimes crying, each time she was asked to describe the incident, the court file says. The discussion was “inappropriate,” the girl said several times.
Investigators were eventually able to comfort the girl enough so she could describe the incident, and used drawings of a naked man and woman to ask the girl what body part Lhermine touched her with. The girl eventually drew an arrow to the man’s penis.
The victim was one of several children under YMCA care at the child care center, which runs daily from 8 a.m. to about 5 p.m., according to the file.
On July 12, the children and staff, including Lhermine and the victim, had taken a field trip to the Morgan Hill Aquatics Center. The alleged sexual assault took place close to closing time, after the class returned to the portable unit at the school, where the program is housed.
When the girl’s mother arrived at the child care facility, Lhermine walked out to her car with the child, and told the mother that earlier that day the victim “had something on her tongue and he had to remove it with a cotton swab,” a summary of the mother’s statement to police said.
The mother explained to police that she often packed fruit snacks in the child’s lunch, and sometimes the fruit would stick to her tongue, according to the court file.
After the mother started to drive away from the facility with her child, the girl told her mother that what Lhermine told her was not true, according to the reports. The girl told Lhermine about the fruit stuck to her tongue, the mother said, and he took her to the bathroom by themselves and closed the door.
“Lhermine asked (the victim) to open her mouth … which she did,” according to the police summary of the mother’s statement, which includes that, “Lhermine then pulled his pants down and put his penis in her mouth.”
The girl objected to Lhermine’s behavior, and he re-clothed himself and told the girl to rinse out her mouth. The two then exited the bathroom into the program classroom.
The court file also includes statements from police interviews with other YMCA employees, who said YMCA policies prohibit staff from ever being alone with a child in the bathroom – and there are no exceptions to this rule.
Lhermine admitted he was alone with the victim in the bathroom and he knew he should not have been, but he was “lazy,” the court file says. He told police that he used his finger, wrapped with a piece of gauze, to clean the fruit from the girl’s tongue.
Lhermine became “flustered and extremely nervous” when the interrogating officer told him what the victim said, the police reports say.
Lhermine denied placing his penis in the girl’s mouth, but said he asked her to “close (her) eyes and it’ll be done” just before he probed her tongue.
Lhermine’s co-worker at the YMCA program told police she was cleaning the kitchen of the facility about the time the incident happened, and she did not know he was alone with the child and did not notice them go into the bathroom together, according to the police reports.
A YMCA supervisor interviewed by police told investigators she was “positive” that Lhermine had been trained on policies that keep staff from being alone with children.
The YMCA runs a variety of youth programs throughout Morgan Hill, including child care, sports and recreation programs. The program at Paradise Valley Elementary was not associated with the Morgan Hill Unified School District, YMCA staff and police have said.
On July 23, the YMCA Silicon Valley sent out 2,640 letters to “any parent who has any child who may have come in contact with Nicolas Lhermine,” according to YMCA Executive Director Elizabeth Jordan. The letter was sent not only to parents whose children were in programs staffed by Lhermine, but even to those whose children may have been enrolled in other programs on the same property or site as Lhermine’s programs.
“Please know that we have no reason to believe that your child specifically has been harmed, however it is important that you talk to your child about his/her Y experiences to confirm this,” the letter written by Jordan says.
Authorities cannot say whether Lhermine is under suicide watch at Santa Clara County Jail due to laws protecting inmates’ medical privacy, according to Sheriff’s Sgt. Kurtis Stenderup.
Shortly after Lhermine was arrested, at the police station officers asked him if he feels like ending his life, and Lhermine replied, “I feel like ending my life and my life is ruined,” according to the court file. He then covered his face with both hands and began to cry.
