CENTENNIAL | A former Prairie Middle School teacher accused of a years-long string of sexual assaults on students as young as 14 confessed to investigators, according to court testimony Friday.
Aurora police said that when then went to the Aurora middle school to question Brian Vasquez, they were initially only investigating accusations from one girl who said she had exchanged inappropriate text messages with the teacher, Detective Patrick McGinty testified Friday during Vasquez’s preliminary hearing.
But Vasquez immediately offered the names of four other students, and said his relationship with the girls went beyond just texting and included sexual contact, McGinty said.
Detectives subsequently interviewed the other girls over several days in August and largely confirmed much of Vasquez’s story, McGinty said.
In all, Vasquez faces 37 counts related to sexual contact and sexual communications between him and the girls. At the end of Friday’s hearing, Arapahoe County Court Judge Eric White ruled there was ample evidence for Vasquez to stand trial on every charge. Vasquez, who has been in jail since his arrest in August, is due in court again in February for arraignment, where he would enter a plea to charges and a possible trial date could been set.
The two-and-a-half hour hearing was filled with graphic testimony about Vasquez’s relationships with the girls. At times police struggled to keep the numerous acts and multiple victims straight.
“I understand, there are lots of children, Detective,” Deputy District Attorney Cara Morlan said when McGinty got crossed up on some of the details.
Vasquez, 34, sat quietly throughout the hearing wearing an orange Arapahoe County Jail jumpsuit and glasses with his hands and feet shackled.
His lawyer, Charles Nicholas, argued that the prosecution’s case relied solely on Vasquez’s brief confession and interviews with the girls. He noted that while police said there were several sexual pictures and messages between Vasquez and the girls, investigators didn’t find a single one.
“None of it was recovered, not a shred,” he said.
Police testified that was because Vasquez told the girls to erase the pictures, in part so his wife wouldn’t find out. They said he went as far as grabbing one girl’s phone and checking to make sure the pictures were deleted.
McGinty testified that the girls told police they felt pressured by Vasquez to escalate their relationships with him. In one case a girl told police Vasquez had a sexual relationship with her friend as well and pressured her into more sexual contact by telling her that the other girl was “his favorite” because she had sex with him.
Much of the illegal sexual contact happened inside the school, according to testimony, as well as in Vasquez’s car at various spots around Aurora. One girl told police Vasquez groped her in class while he was teaching.
Another girl told police her relationship with Vasquez was limited to illicit pictures and she had to repeatedly rebuff his attempts to grope her. Many of the girls struggled to remember dates, McGinty said, but that girl remembered one incident because it happened around the time she had braces put on. Vasquez’s lawyers argued that the lack of specificity on the date range — which stretches from early 2013 to August 2017 — was reason for the judge to drop some counts, but White rejected that.
Moran said prosecutors may amend the date range listed on the charges.
None of the victims or their families were in court Friday, but two lawyers representing the families were present, Emily Tofte of the Rocky Mountain Victim Law center and Denver civil rights lawyer Qusair Mohamedbai.
Both said they were representing the families solely as victim advocates, not for any potential civil lawsuits.