Richland deputy, former USC basketball player fired after teen sex assault lawsuit
A former school resource officer for the Richland County Sheriff’s Department who also was a basketball star for the University of South Carolina was fired amid allegations he sexually assaulted a female high school student.
Jamel Bradley was fired from the sheriff’s department Oct. 30, according to department spokesperson Capt. Maria Yturria. He’s embroiled in a civil lawsuit filed in federal court last year by the mother of a female student at the high school where Bradley worked as a deputy. The girl is unidentified in the lawsuit because she’s a juvenile.
Yturria wouldn’t say if Bradley’s termination was related to the lawsuit.
The sheriff’s department said it can’t comment on pending litigation. But in its answer to the lawsuit, the department denied all allegations of wrongdoing.
Bradley was a record-setting point guard for USC in the early 2000s and became a Richland County deputy in 2007. He was assigned as a school resource officer at Spring Valley High School in northeast Columbia, where the incidents included in the lawsuit allegedly took place.
Bradley was fired “as a result of an investigation, based on information that came out from that,” Yturria said. She wouldn’t say if that investigation was connected to the lawsuit.
The law firm representing Bradley and the sheriff’s department said that because of the pending litigation, it is not in a position to comment.
The girl was 14 and 15 years old when Bradley assaulted her by “illegal kissing, sexual touch, and sexual fondling” in his office, according to the lawsuit.
Administrators with Spring Valley, which is in Richland District 2, were told about the assault by the teen and others between March and early April 2018 but school officials didn’t inform law enforcement, the suit claims. In mid-April a health expert who was seeing the teen reported to the school district and the sheriff’s department that the teen had said she was assaulted by Bradley.
The sheriff’s department began an internal investigation during which Bradley was subject to a lie-detector test. Sheriff’s department records related to the investigation and obtained by The State don’t indicate many findings and don’t say if Bradley was reprimanded. But the internal investigation found that Bradley had not turned on his body camera during interactions with the teen.
The school district released a statement about the lawsuit saying it generally doesn’t comment on pending litigation and that the court has issued a confidentiality order on certain information.
“While we cannot comment on the specifics of the case, the district does not condone or tolerate any sexual harassment or assault of students, and its administrators and staff take reports of any sexual harassment or assault very seriously. The District also wishes to make it clear that it disputes many of the allegations made in the lawsuit, and believes appropriate actions were taken by the administration.”
Prior accusations
Bradley also was accused of having inappropriate relationships with students at least two other times before 2018, sheriff’s department records show.
In 2011, a cheerleading coach from Richland Northeast High School saw Bradley acting in a “flirting” manner with a cheerleader after multiple football games, according to records. The coach questioned the cheerleader, and the cheerleader is reported to have said “the other officers know (Bradley) is mine.” Neither the coach or the cheerleader are identified in the department’s documents.
The cheerleader denied the statement during questioning by police and described her relationship with Bradley as a friendly SRO-to-student relationship. But she admitted to having communicated with Bradley over Facebook. Bradley said he didn’t have such communications with the student.
The department’s internal investigation found Bradley hadn’t violated any rules of conduct.
In 2016, a parent of another Spring Valley female student told a school official Bradley was having a relationship with her daughter’s friend and that there were pictures the SRO sent the friend and audio recordings about the relationship, according to records. The records do not describe the photos.
A department investigation of the allegation found Bradley had met with a female student behind a Target to give her advice on asking a boy to a dance. Bradley was warned about meeting with students privately and told to always have another deputy with him.
Those incidents, combined with the accusations by the Spring Valley student, led to a criminal investigation with the special victim’s unit of the sheriff’s department.
The department’s records and the lawsuit indicate that the student in the lawsuit was having a difficult time at Spring Valley. Bradley told investigators that he thought she wanted to transfer to another school. Another school official also told authorities that he believed the student was making up rumors about a relationship with Bradley so she could get out of Spring Valley, according to the department records.
The lawsuit claims an investigator with the sheriff’s department told the student and a social worker assigned to her that the department thought the teen’s report “was credible: that the internal investigation (had) been ‘abruptly taken away’” and that the same investigation was “prematurely closed ... without looking at all the evidence.”
The investigator is alleged to have told the student and social worker that Bradley was “above reproach” in the sheriff’s department.