Former Cherry Creek Schools teacher Brian Vasquez sentenced to 40 years to life for sexual assault

DENVER — A for­mer teacher at Prairie Mid­dle School who pleaded guilty ear­lier this year to sex­u­ally assault­ing or “sex­ting” with the stu­dents was sen­tenced to 40 years to life on five counts, includ­ing sex­ual assault on chil­dren by a per­son in a posi­tion of trust, by a judge on Friday.

Brian Vasquez, 35, was orig­i­nally charged with 41 felonies before a plea deal took place back in July. The remain­ing charges were dropped. He had pre­vi­ously pleaded not guilty to all 41 counts.

Vasquez was arrested in August 2017 at the mid­dle school, which is part of the Cherry Creek School Dis­trict, after an inves­ti­ga­tion uncov­ered that he’d had inap­pro­pri­ate rela­tion­ships with stu­dents of his at the school. He’d exchanged nude pho­tos with sev­eral of them and had con­tact with at least one, pros­e­cu­tors said.

The Cherry Creek School Dis­trict announced Mon­day it had reached an $11.5 mil­lion set­tle­ment with the fam­i­lies of the five vic­tims in the case.

Vasquez was fired in Sep­tem­ber after seven years as a social stud­ies teacher and a coach in the “Des­ti­na­tion Imag­i­na­tion” pro­gram. His arrest prompted charges of fail­ure to report being filed against sev­eral school admin­is­tra­tors, which are still being adjudicated.

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