The facts
Rachel Ann Boss, 37, was arrested Sept. 17 by Tacoma police and booked into Pierce County jail. The booking sheet lists four counts of first-degree child molestation, one count of first-degree child rape, and two counts of viewing depictions of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct. Bail is $1 million. The Tacoma News Tribune, citing court documents, says she is accused of helping her partner rape a child.
That partner is charged as William Kelso Flournoy IV, 26. Court documents and a public Facebook account say the defendant is transgender and uses the name Isabelle, the News Tribune reported. Prosecutors charged first-degree rape of a child and sexual exploitation of a minor. A not-guilty plea was entered. Court Commissioner Barbara McInvaille set bail at $1 million. The FBI's Missing and Exploited Children Task Force and Tacoma police arrested Flournoy on March 5 outside a Portland Avenue shelter for unhoused people.
The March case is an infant. Court documents say the child was 6 or 7 months old. The father told investigators the family was in a motel, both parents were working, and both had an open Child Protective Services case. They asked Flournoy to watch their three children. Google flagged uploads and sent a CyberTip. Detectives matched the images to moles on Flournoy's hands. The father identified his daughter. A search of the room found five phones, a pacifier, a child's cup, and a stuffed animal. The charged conduct in that case runs through 2023. A later court filing puts the broader allegations between April 6, 2023, and June 1, 2024.
This was not the first file. In July 2025 prosecutors charged dealing in depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct and two counts of possession. Google had flagged more than 46 files. More turned up on Snapchat. Flournoy skipped the arraignment. A felony warrant for failure to appear went out Aug. 13, 2025. It was still active the morning of the March arrest.
Flournoy had also sat on Pierce County's Youth Action Board, the panel of young people with experience of homelessness that advises the county on housing. The REACH Center in Tacoma coordinates that board. Director Carlos Garcia told the News Tribune Flournoy was never REACH staff and had not been on the board since October 2023. Detectives still planned to call REACH, because they were worried about other victims.
Boss's account, in the documents the News Tribune reviewed, is that on three occasions Flournoy assaulted a 2-year-old, the sister of the infant in the March case, and Boss stood at the front door so nobody walked in. On one of those occasions she said she held the child's hand and rubbed her back. She also told police she was scared Flournoy would kill her if she talked. They arrested her the same day, Sept. 17. Texts between the two are from 2025. Nobody has been convicted.
Our take
A person the county put on a board about homeless kids got asked to babysit an infant in a motel by parents who already had a CPS case. Google, not a social worker, found the pictures. By then there was already a warrant for skipping court on a child-porn case. The arrest came in March. The partner's story, months later, is that she held the door and held the toddler's hand and was too scared to tell anyone, including during the texts in 2025. The jail wrote it down as rape, molestation, and watching the recordings. A million dollars. Each.
REACH says the board seat ended in October 2023. Fine. The babysitting was 2023. The skipped court date was 2025. The girlfriend's cuffs were last week. "Who could have guessed" is an insult to anyone who read the March charging papers. The then-girlfriend was already in the story. She just didn't have a booking number yet.
