A South Carolina school police officer who confessed to sexually abusing two students was sentenced to probation on Tuesday after a judge partially accepted a plea deal recommended by prosecutors, The Washington Post reports. The former deputy, Jamel Bradley, could have faced as many as 15 years in prison if he had been convicted of the initial two charges against him. Instead, Richland County Solicitor Byron Gipson’s office offered Bradley a deal that spared him prison time in exchange for pleading guilty to two felonies: assault and battery of one student and sexual battery of another. He was placed on probation for three years. Solicitors did not recommend that Bradley be put on the state’s sex offender registry. But Judge Daniel Coble ordered Bradley to register as a sex offender. “It was a mistake but there are consequences,” Coble told Bradley. Bradley’s sentence of probation was handed down one day after a Washington Post investigation revealed that the Justice Department and many law enforcement agencies and school systems across the country have failed to take basic steps to prevent sexual misconduct and root out abusive school cops.
The Post found that Richland County school and law enforcement officials dismissed or failed to thoroughly investigate years of sexual misconduct complaints against Bradley. The first report of inappropriate behavior was made in 2010. Bradley was not arrested until 2019. Because Bradley will be subject to South Carolina’s sex offender conditions, he will be prohibited from being near schools like the ones he used to patrol. But he will not spend any time behind bars. The deal that allows Bradley to avoid prison time is not unusual for law enforcement officers convicted of crimes involving child sexual abuse. Earlier this year, a Post investigation revealed that hundreds of law enforcement officers accused of child sexual abuse have avoided serious consequences in the criminal justice system, even after they admitted to wrongdoing. The Post identified at least 1,200 officers convicted of charges stemming from child sexual abuse from 2005 through 2020. Nearly 40 percent of those convicted officers avoided prison sentences.
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