Girl kept journals of sexual assault by North Texas high school coach, warrant says
As she lay naked on her bed when she was 15 years old, a woman told police, Anthony “Tony” Clark talked to her about the joys of sexual contact.
“He convinced me that’s what I wanted to do,” the woman told a detective, according to a warrant.
She recorded the details of that incident — which she said occurred at her Grapevine home in November 1999 — and other sexual encounters with Clark in 1999 and 2000 in the journals she wrote as a teen, according to arrest warrants obtained on Monday by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
The victim, who is now an adult, made an outcry in January of this year, police said. Clark, 45, was arrested Monday after an investigation by Grapevine police.
Clark, a former North Texas high school volleyball coach, was booked into jail Monday and accused of sexually assaulting the then 15-year-old girl between September 1999 and February 2000 in Grapevine.
Clark was in the Tarrant County Jail on Monday in lieu of $75,000 bail and faces three counts of sexual assault of a child under 17.
The same girl was the victim in all three cases, Grapevine police said.
Clark is accused of sexually assaulting the girl while he was a volleyball coach in the Southlake Carroll school district, according to the warrant. He met the girl in May 1999 while he was the volleyball coach at Carroll High School and she was a student at a nearby school. He left that district and became a coach in Lewisville, but he stayed in contact with the girl, Grapevine police said.
At the time they met, Clark was 25 and the girl was 15.
He later returned to coach at Carroll, police said.
He is no longer employed at any school as of Monday, Grapevine police said.
Clark had coached at Carroll from 1997 to 1999 and then in the Lewisville Independent School District from 1999 to 2000, according to Grapevine police. He returned to Carroll in 2000 and stayed there until 2009. He worked in the Keller school district from 2009 to 2018.
Grapevine police said Clark was last employed in the White Settlement school district from 2018 to 2019.
All of the alleged crimes occurred in Grapevine, police said, but Clark was never employed by the Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District.
The warrant written by Grapevine Detective Pedro Soltero gave the following account of the incidents:
At first, a majority of their conversations in 1999 were conducted on AOL Instant Messenger, but then it switched to meeting each other.
She kept three journals — one detailed how she met Clark, and the two others described the sexual encounters.
In November 1999, at her Grapevine home when her parents were not there, the girl and Clark performed sex acts on each other. No man had paid so much interest in her, she wrote in her journal.
On Feb. 16, 2000, Clark was going to visit his parents in Grapevine, but he wanted to see her. He picked her up as she walked down a street and drove to Snakey Lane in Grapevine. More sex acts were performed as they sat in his vehicle. She wrote in her journal how “windows actually fogged.”
According to her journal, a few days later, Clark drove her to his parents’ home in Grapevine. In her journal she wrote that his parents were out of town.
“Anyway, things went far, like to the possible extent. There was so much to say that was said and done that nite,” she wrote in her journal, according to the warrant.
At his parents’ home, Clark and the girl performed more sex acts on each other. It lasted about an hour and after they were done, he drove off her home and dropped her off.
One of the last encounters occurred on Feb. 23, 2000, when he picked her up and drove her to Lakeview Park located in Grapevine. She performed oral sex on him, according to the warrant.
The warrant noted that not each and every fact of the investigation was documented in the report.
No other girls have made allegations against Clark, Grapevine police said.
But Grapevine police noted that anybody who may have been a victim or any parent who believes their child could be a victim should contact their local police agency.
This story was originally published March 2, 2020 at 10:57 AM.
