Editor’s note: This article includes some details of sexual assault allegations involving a minor and mentions of child sexual abuse materials that may be triggering.

A former Lawrence school district paraeducator was bound over for trial Thursday for charges related to allegedly grooming and inappropriately touching a minor and possessing images of child sexual abuse.

Caleb Rahmeier is charged with one count of aggravated indecent liberties with a child, one count of attempted sexual exploitation of a child, and one count of sexual exploitation of a child, which are all felonies. He is also charged with one count of contributing to child misconduct or deprivation, a misdemeanor. 

In addition to testimony from a teen who Rahmeier allegedly spoke to and touched inappropriately, witnesses testified that his laptop contained evidence that he had viewed hundreds of files of child sexual abuse materials, or CSAM.

Douglas County District Judge Amy Haney ruled Thursday that prosecutor Megan Ahsens had established probable cause in the preliminary hearing for the three felony counts, meaning there was sufficient evidence for Rahmeier to face a jury trial. He will also be tried for the misdemeanor.

Rahmeier was arrested on Oct. 31, and a relative bonded him out of the Douglas County jail for $40,000.

The high school student who reported Rahmeier said at the hearing Thursday that the defendant helped him sneak out from his home late at night around 30 times between June 2023 and spring of 2024. He said they stayed in contact until September 2024, when the teen reported Rahmeier. 

Throughout that time, Rahameier allegedly initiated sexual contact and sexual conversation with the teen frequently, both in person and online.

When the teen and Rahmeier first met, the boy said he was in seventh grade at West Middle School in the Lawrence public school district, where Rahmeier worked one-on-one with another student needing special education services. 

The boy who made the report became a high school freshman in fall of 2024. Rahmeier also moved to the same high school that year. 

When he was in seventh grade, the teen said he would talk to Rahmeier about video games and Pokémon, and Rahmeier agreed to be the staff sponsor for a club the boy was in.

Rahmeier started going to the teen’s track meets, the boy said. The summer after his seventh grade year, he said Rahmeier gave the teen his contact on Discord, a messaging and video chat app and they started playing games remotely. The summer after his eighth grade year going into his freshman year is when their relationship went beyond video games, the teen said.

The boy had told Rahmeier that he’d sneak out at night to ride his bike and meet a girl he liked at the time. Rahmeier told him biking was dangerous and offered to give him rides instead.

The teen testified Thursday that the rides always took place after 10 p.m., and Rahmeier would pick him up from the girl’s home between 1 and 3 a.m. He said Rahmeier instructed him to not tell anyone about the rides — he had said people might get the wrong idea, and then Rahmeier would stop giving the teen rides.

While in the car, the boy testified, Rahmeier would frequently bring up topics of sex, masturbation and pornography. He alleged that on most rides, Rahmeier would ask the teen if he’d had sex with the girl he was visiting, while also telling the boy about his own sex life. 

Rahmeier also allegedly would “flick” the teen’s genitalia on rides, which the teen assumed was meant to emulate middle school boys’ roughhousing. He said it made him uncomfortable.

The teen said that one night after picking him up, Rahmeier asked the boy to come to his home to help him move something, like a microwave, as payment for the rides. The boy said he tried to help but was uncomfortable and tired and asked to be taken home, and Rahmeier did.

On another occasion in the car in the summer of 2023, the boy said that Rahmeier stroked his thigh and asked him to show the adult his genitalia.

Rahmeier had allegedly told the boy on multiple prior occasions that it was normal to experiment with people of the same gender and that the teen “shouldn’t knock it until you try it.” 

He said he told Rahmeier “I think it’s really weird and it makes me uncomfortable,” but the adult allegedly “reassured” him it wasn’t a big deal and wasn’t weird. The teen was 14 years old at the time.

The boy told the court Thursday he did not want the contact or the verbal advances when Rahmeier allegedly asked him to expose himself, or at any other time.

“It always felt like he had power over me since he was bigger than me, older than me and he was the one driving,” the teen said.

The teen also said that Rahmeier would ask him for nude photos over Discord and Snapchat, and that Rahmeier would tell the teen that he loved him.

In December 2023, there was a surprise celebration at West where the Lawrence Schools Foundation presented Rahmeier with the annual Dedication to Education award and a $5,000 prize.

The teen testified Thursday that Rahmeier shared some of that cash prize with him in the form of gift cards. Rahmeier’s reasoning, according to the boy, was the former para “probably would have quit if I didn’t become friends with him in seventh grade.”

The teen said he chose to disclose his discomfort with his relationships with Rahmeier when the adult started to seem more “aggravated” and “irritated” with him for spending more time with friends his age, calling him “ungrateful.” Rahmeier also allegedly tried to get the boy to sneak out from his friend’s house at night during a sleepover.

The teen said that most people would say that it’s normal for him to hang out with kids his age “as opposed to someone two to three times older than me.”

The teen also watched a video on YouTube explaining that an adult like a teacher shouldn’t talk about sex, porn or masturbation with a child, which got his gears turning. He ultimately confided in his friends and, with their help, spoke to Amanda Faunce, the associate principal at his high school, in September 2024.

The teen’s mother also testified, saying the boy had exhibited behavioral changes after his best friend moved away in middle school and he started getting closer with Rahmeier. She said that he doesn’t want to talk to his parents, keeps to himself and has been more reserved and less social.

Following the boy’s report, Faunce contacted his parents, the principal and ultimately the police department. Rahmeier was immediately relieved of his duties when police responded to the report Sept. 3, 2024.

The former para consented to handing over his laptop and desktop computer for forensic review. Detective Evan Curtis of the Lawrence Police Department, who responded to the initial report and interviewed Rahmeier, testified that former para suggested he kept the laptop by his bed to look at “pornographic material.”

Lawrence police officers submitted data from both computers to the Heart of America Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory in Kansas City, Missouri. Amy Corrigan, an FBI forensic examiner who works at HARCFL, analyzed the data and testified Thursday.

She said she found accounts on the laptop linked to Rahmeier, and evidence of CSAM, which Corrigan testified was formerly called child pornography.

She also testified that the laptop contained files downloaded from software that allows people to access the dark web. She read the titles of files on the laptop in court Thursday, which included HTML documents, photos and videos. The titles, she said, were in line with other CSAM cases.

She couldn’t easily open all of the files because some appeared to be stored on a couple external hard drives that the police didn’t have access to. However, the laptop retained thumbcaches showing that files from those drives had been opened on the laptop at some point.

Using forensic software, she was able to generate viewable versions of those files. Hanley, Corrigan, Ahsen and Thomas Bath, one of Rahmeier’s attorneys, gathered around a computer to view a few of what Corrigan said were 500 or 600 files in total. 

Without showing the court, Corrigan described the images out loud. After a few, Hanley and Ahsen asked her to pause. The images were CSAM, many involving pedophila.

Corrigan did not indicate if any of the CSAM pertained to the boy who had reported Rahmeier.

Bath asked Corrigan if the thumbcaches were easily viewable from the laptop. She said it would be hard to view them without additional software, unless a user plugged in the external hard drives containing the original files. 

Bath asked if that was a good way to store the materials if somebody wanted those files to be easily accessible. Corrigan said it was not.

Ahsens clarified that there was also evidence of CSAM found directly on the laptop.

Bath and his fellow attorney waived their final argument.

Rahmeier opted not to enter a plea following Hanley’s ruling Thursday. He will do that at an arraignment hearing, scheduled for 1 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 13 via Zoom.

Hanley, the defense and prosecution will set trial dates, motion hearing dates and other deadlines at that arraignment hearing.

Defendants in criminal cases should be presumed not guilty unless they are convicted.

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Wulfe Wulfemeyer (they/them), reporter and news editor, has worked with The Lawrence Times since May 2025. They can be reached at [email protected].

Read their complete bio here. Read their work for the Times here.

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