Fairview Elementary School teacher Jonathan Ullrich was arrested Monday, Dec. 13, and charged with nine counts of aggravated sexual battery, aggravated sexual exploitation of a child, eight counts of rape, incest and eight counts of rape of a child.
Ullrich is being held on a $200,000 bond in the Maury County Jail. District Attorney General Brent Cooper announced that there are two minor victims and neither are students at Fairview Elementary School.
The Williamson County Schools (WCS) said the 50-year-old Ullrich was placed on unpaid leave after his arrest. It also sent letters to families of the victims and the staff notifying them of Ullrich's arrest.
Ullrich, named FES Elementary School Teacher of the Year at the WCS's annual employee of the year celebration in 2020, had a history of sexual harassment complaints against him dating back to 2014.
He was the first principal at Longview Elementary School in Spring Hill, which opened in 2007 and served in that position until 2014. Ullrich was reassigned by the WCS to the district office after an investigation into allegations that he violated the district's anti-harassment policy by making inappropriate comments to a staff member but was allowed to get back into the classroom that fall.
He served previously as an assistant principal at Heritage Middle and Bethesda Elementary schools and taught at Chapman's Retreat Elementary School.
Sexual assaults increase sharply in K-12 schools
Meanwhile, the Department of Education last year said that sexual assault reports sharply increased at K-12 schools. Data showed that reports of sexual assaults at elementary, middle and high schools increased sharply between 2015 and 2018, underscoring the need for schools to be prepared in handling reports of sexual violence.
The finding came from the Civil Rights Data Collection, which is a compilation of data drawn from surveys of every public school, charter school and juvenile justice facility in the nation. (Related: Public school is now transsexual child abuse indoctrination as the NEA colludes with LGBT groups to exploit schoolchildren.)
The collection of data aims to help the Education Department enforce civil rights law and has been a critical tool for advocates who seek to ensure schools are treating every child fairly, regardless of race, gender or disability.
The department found that reports of sexual violence at schools rose from about 9,600 in the 2015-2016 school year to nearly 15,000 in the 2017-2018 school year. That's an increase of more than 50 percent.
"We hear all too often about innocent children being sexually assaulted by an adult at school. That should never happen. No parent should have to think twice about their child's safety while on school grounds," Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said in an issue brief published alongside the report.
The discourse around sexual assault has typically revolved around college campuses, where surveys found that up to one in five women experience sexual violence.
But less attention were focused on K-12 setting, where administrators are far more likely to be unprepared or unaware of their obligations under federal law when it comes to handling allegations of sexual assault.
Unlike colleges, where students often get training or information about where to go to report a sexual assault, grade school students might not know who to tell.
"There is so much more that needs to be done in the K-12 space to increase awareness around sex discrimination and sexual harassment," said Shiwali Patel, senior counsel at the National Women's Law Center.
Watch the video below showing how the Federal Bureau of Investigation got caught covering up child abuse sex crimes.
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