Black crime: A Queens school employee has been charged with sexually abusing six 9 and 10-year-old schoolgirls, becoming the fifth school worker in New York to be arrested for sexual crimes recently

Brett Picou, 30, of Public School 52 in Springfield Gardens, is accused of spanking one of the girls, grabbing the children’s buttocks as they walked up stairs and fondling their buttocks over their clothing when he hugged them. Picou, of Jamaica, Queens, has been charged with seven counts of first-degree sexual abuse, seven counts of forcible touching, one count of second-degree course of sexual conduct against a child and six counts of endangering the welfare of a child, the Queens District Attorney’s office said. Picou, who worked as a full-time paraprofessional in an art class at the school, was caught after another teacher overheard students talking about the touching and informed the police on February 15, 2012. Paraprofessionals are aides assigned to individual students, often special-needs students or students in crisis. Picou is the latest in a string of school workers charged with sexual crimes against children, several of whom had histories of sexual contact with children buried in their personnel records. This worrying spate prompted schools chancellor, Dennis M. Walcott, to order a review of all past investigations since 2000. The arrests began on February 6, 2012 and four other school workers have been charged with alleged inappropriate contact with school pupils. School aide Taleek Brooks, of P.S. 243 in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, was charged with creating child pornography in a classroom and possessing other child porn. Gregory Atkins, an aide at P.S. 87 on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, was charged with molesting a young male student who he had forced to strip in the school lavatory. Wilbert Cortez, a computer teacher at P.S. 174 in Rego Park, Queens, who had a history of inappropriately touching children, was charged with fondling an 8-year-old boy and a 9-year-old boy in his school on February 16, 2012. Substitute teacher, Chukwuma Duru, was accused of twisting a 16-year-old boy’s nipples in P.S. 479 in the Morrisania section of the Bronx on February 10, 2012.