Bryant Teacher Charged With Sexual Assault
Twenty five-year old Joseph Bresnahan is the Assistant Band Director at Bryant High School when he arrived on campus Tuesday morning, he was sent home, suspended with pay.
Tuesday afternoon, he was arrested at his home in Bryant on four counts of sexual assault. The victim was a 15-year old male student. Word of the arrest spread quickly as parents picked their kids up at Bryant North.
"Well, if it's true, they need to fire him and throw him in jail," says Randy Sanders.
Police say the assaults of the 15-year old boy occurred at Bresnahan's apartment in Bryant. Four separate assaults over three months and the last one occurred in recent days.
"It is very important for the parents to pay attention to their kids and start watching what they're doing and pay attention to their reactions to the phone calls they receive and so on," says Sgt. Harold Edmonson with the Bryant Police Department.
FOX16 knocked on Bresnahan's door, but no one answered.
"It's terribly shocking, I mean this is such a nice community, it's such a Christian faith based place, and it is shocking," says Jerry Bowers.
Bryant Police said it's the first time they've ever investigated an alleged sexual assault of a teacher against a student.
Randy Sanders says, "You wouldn't expect it to happen anywhere, but it seems like it happens everywhere. So you just deal with it, I've got a good kid, I'm not worried about her, but you never know."
"You know, of course it's disgusting that anybody in authority would do something like that, it's horrible," says Jerry Bowers.
Sources close to the investigation confirmed to FOX16 that it was the mother of the victim who alerted police Tuesday morning.
Bryant is not Joseph Bresnahan's first teaching job, after graduating from Harding University, he was a Band Director at Vilonia High School for three years.
He goes before a judge Wednesday morning.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
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5 comments:
I'm surprised I missed this on your blog. This has got me really disturbed. If you get on Facebook, he has a profile. We were looking last night, and if you look at "more photos of Joe Bresnahan", it is extremely obvious which boy it was. The boy himself has about 30 pictures posted of him and Joe hugging or being on top of each other. It's pretty bewildering. I always thought well of Joe at Harding, and it makes me sad that he's thrown his life away. I really believe he was probably a great band director. Who knows what's going to happen now?
yes, yes it is.
I recognize him from the picture I just found. That makes me feel rather sick.
Get this -- I was talking to Allen (my bro in law's bro) the other day about the dangers of the appearance of anything inappropriate in the field of education. He says, "yeah I mean look at my old roomie -- he's in jail now." I'm like, "WTF?!?" and he's like, "yeah, Joe Bresnahan... didn't I tell you about that?" It was weird to hear about it from the view point of one of his friends who knew him well. This guy was in Spring Sing ensemble, jazz band, tons of band stuff, was in Delta Chi or was it Chi Sigs (?) and a beau for Delta Gamma Rho -- no one who knew him believed it until he violated the terms of his parole. His friends had warned him at the first school he taught at about having students over to his house. Allen still isn't 100% believing he's guilty, but he's heard a lot more of the facts and back story than me... it's just insane to hear about this again after I read this in early May...
i just wanted to say that the student who this happened to is gay and seduced mr b i was a student of mr b's and he is a good guy just a 15 year old kid came around and tricked him.
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