Brent Skelton is currently being held on a $50,000 bond.
A fifth-grade teacher at Orchard Elementary in Billings was taken into custody on the evening of Sept.19th after being charged with two counts of felony sexual assault on two of his students, 11 and 12 years old respectively. Brent Skelton resigned from his job teaching fifth grade after he was placed on leave by school officials before he was arrested and booked at the Yellowstone County Detention Facility on $150,000 bond. When appearing before a judge on the 24th, Skelton pleaded not guilty to sexual assault on girls under the age of consent. Judge Michael Moses reset his bond to $50,000, and if he is able to make bail, Skelton will be allowed to potentially go to work for his brother at the Mercedes-Benz dealership so long as he wears a GPS monitoring bracelet, keeps away from all schools, and has no contact with any underage children. It is unclear if Mercedes-Benz will be able to allow children into their dealership while he is working, if they do indeed hire him. If found guilty, the charges Skelton faces could land him a prison sentence between four years and life in prison as well as a $100,000 fine. Skelton no longer works for the school. He was placed on administrative leave after the allegations first surfaced earlier in the summer. According to School District 2 Superintendent Greg Upham, Skelton resigned after learning that criminal charges had been filed.
The crimes in question occurred during the 2018-2019 school year and were brought to the attention of the school and authorities after parents of one fifth-grade student found inappropriate text messages later described by detectives as “flirtatious or sexually suggestive” sent from Skelton’s phone. After the parents alerted school officials, they began an investigation into the matter that revealed a second girl from Skelton’s fifth-grade class with similar messages on her phone. Police became involved in July after receiving a report from Child and Family Services. When detectives interviewed the two girls, ages 11 and 12, they alleged that Skelton would pay special attention to them, giving them back rubs and then moving his hand down to their buttocks or vaginal area underneath their underwear. One girl told detectives Skelton would touch the part of her body she used to “go pee.” Another student from that class told investigators that she had witnessed Skelton touching his female fifth-grade students very often, including these back rubs, and that they felt uncomfortable with the behavior. One of his students said that they saw a student on Skelton’s lap “almost every day” and that they had tried to avoid him as much as possible. Michelle Smith, the district investigator, said that one of the students seemed almost protective of Skelton, saying she and another student were Skelton’s “favorites,” and saying he would do things for them like buy them Dairy Queen or sneak them leftover food.
Upham released a statement saying, “The term we are using a lot is ‘see something say something.’ That has to do with school violence or any issues of safety and concern is see something say something. We are hypervigilant with safety in all capacities and something like this is extremely concerning and so we will review and examine our internal protocol and procedures and work toward everything that we need to improve moving forward.”
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