Roanoke Rapids police say they are cooperating with Virginia authorities in their investigation into a former city resident charged in Prince William County with sexual battery of a teenager.

A former city resident who remembers the man, Kevin Ricks, said he is shocked by an article in Sunday’s Washington Post.

The Post reported through a four month investigation that Ricks, a 1978 Roanoke Rapids High School graduate, lured young boys into sexual situations, not only in Virginia, but across the world and kept detailed journals about the liaisons.

Ricks, 49, and a University of North Carolina graduate, worked his post college career as a teacher. From 1984 to 1985, he worked at Northeast Academy in Lasker.

The paper reports that Roanoke Rapids may be where the earliest known abuse case occurred.

“He seemed to be a regular guy. He was into the drama club, and literature so he looked at the world from an ‘artsy’ point of view if that makes any sense,” a former Roanoke Rapids resident who didn’t want his named used, said in email correspondence with rrspin.com today. “I don't ever remember him dating anyone but I never suspected him to be gay. We used to eat lunch together sometimes with a group and I remember him getting ideas for the school paper.”

The man did remember one strange thing that occurred during a class reunion party around 2003. “He brought a foreign exchange student with him. Some of us met at Ralph's for dinner on Friday night and I just remember thinking, ‘Why did he bring this young boy, and not his wife?’ I never saw him do anything out of the way but he just seemed to be really friendly with the boy.”

The man said he his shocked by The Post story. “If the things that the Post says were found are true, I don't see how he can plead not guilty. It is a really creepy feeling to think that someone you know could do these types of things and impact so many lives all over the world. There are adults finding out that they were molested as a child, and now are going to have to deal with all of the emotional pain that comes along with that. I can't imagine having to go through that at any age.”

The man kept up with Ricks through Facebook. “One last thing that keeps coming to mind is I remember when I opened my Facebook account I started reconnecting with some of my old classmates. Kevin was one. He was working in Manassas and commuting back and forth to the eastern shore of Maryland on weekends at the time. “We sent several messages about what we had been up to. I have always had an interest in photography, and Kevin made several posts about his new camera, and how much he liked taking pictures. I just keep thinking of him being so excited about his new camera, and now knowing what he was doing with it makes my skin crawl.

“My heart goes out to his family, and to his victims. I can only imagine what this is doing to them all.”

The Post reported as a teenager, Ricks worked at area summer camps, landing in the late 1970s at Camp Holiday Trails in Charlottesville near the University of Virginia. The camp, which caters to children with disabilities and chronic medical problems, is where he met his future wife, Abby, who is hearing impaired.

The newspaper reported it's also where he met a young deaf boy onto whom he immediately latched. The boy's family provides an account of how the relationship began and evolved, and it also shows the beginning of a pattern that would last until his arrest 32 years later.

The boy's older brother and mother said that Ricks was a junior counselor in the boy's cabin and that he was very protective of the boy, almost to the level of obsession.

Ricks grew close to the family, visiting them in their Virginia home. Knowing that they were in a tough financial situation, Ricks at one point took the boy on a dream vacation to Disney World.

In summer 1978, when Ricks was 18 and the boy was 10, he offered to take him to Ricks's family home in North Carolina because the boy's mother had just divorced and didn't have a place to live.

The brother, who described himself as a longtime friend of Ricks's, said that's when Ricks molested the boy, The Post reported.

Law enforcement officials, who interviewed the victim — now 42 — this summer in Virginia, said he recounted incidents at the North Carolina house that escalated from kissing to explicit sex acts. It is the earliest known abuse case involving Ricks, authorities say