ROGERS, Ark. — Just a day after news broke that a former Rogers teacher was arrested for child sex crimes, a victim has come forward explaining that she reported his behavior years prior.
On Oct. 9, Bradley Quillen was booked into the Benton County Jail on nearly two dozen counts of child sex crimes, including possessing child sexual abuse material and engaging children in sexual activity.
Quillen was released the same day he was booked on a $250,000 bond.
Court documents said that Quillen was a 7th and 8th grade teacher at Kirksey Middle School in Rogers, also coaching basketball and track. Rogers Public Schools has since confirmed that he is no longer employed at the district, having resigned on May 30.
Danielle Darnell, a teacher in Arkansas, said she was a victim of Quillen's behavior and reported it years before his arrest, but to no avail.
Darnell, who at the time was herself a teacher in Morrilton, said that during the 2020-21 school year, she was home one night when she received a random notification that Quillen had followed her on Snapchat. A few seconds later, she claims he sent a video of himself masturbating.
"My husband and I immediately looked him up on Facebook to see if it was just a bot or, you know, who could be sending me this? And then we saw that he taught at Kirksey," Darnell said. "I'm from Rogers, and I live in Rogers now, and so I knew, like, he teaches at Kirksey, this is not OK. He's around children all the time."
"He just added a random person on Snapchat and was sending these things," she said. "This is a concern. He's a teacher. He's with middle schoolers. Middle schoolers use Snapchat. He's adding random people."
The following day, Darnell's husband contacted the Rogers superintendent to explain the situation, putting emphasis that Quillen didn't know who she was or how old she was. However, Darnell said the couple never heard back.
"We were told that it would be addressed, and then, you know, just never heard back," Darnell said, adding that when she heard the news of his arrest years later, she was frustrated and angry.
"It's aggravating. It's so frustrating that our children are not being protected, that we told them that this was happening years ago, and now, who knows how many women and girls and just so many people that he has made his victims," Darnell said.
Rogers Superintendent Jeff Perry told 5NEWS that while he wasn't in his current role at the time, the district did in fact receive Darnell's report.
"We were aware of a situation that [Quillen] had sent an inappropriate image to an adult. But at that point in time, we didn't hear, at least to my knowledge, that there was anything about students, but with the adult to the adult. You know, we can't do a lot about that," Perry said.
Perry explained that the district holds employees to a high standard and would expect them to not exhibit behavior such as what Darnell alleges, but that it happened outside of work and didn't include allegations involving children.
"There was disciplinary action, there was a letter to the file, and then we had a conversation but at that point in time, and I will make it real clear at that point in time, we had no credible information or knowledge that he was having any contact with minors at all," Perry said.
Darnell said she believes Quillen was sending videos like that to other people at the time, too, despite not knowing who the people were.
She also said that, as part of a bigger conversation, social media is not safe for children or teens.
"Snapchat is not safe for teenagers or children. You can add whoever you want at any time — people can see your locations. It's just not a safe app," Darnell said. "I definitely think that parents should be monitoring their children online. I'm a grown adult, and I felt violated receiving that. While I felt comfortable going to somebody, I also had my husband who helped me report it at the time."
Darnell urged parents to have a good relationship with their children so they can be open and be able to communicate these things with them.
Melanie Halbrook from the Benton County Children and Family Advocacy Center agreed that communication between parents and their kids is key.
"For parents, communication is so important in times like this, where students are hearing about the news and they're hearing about what's going on, it's checking in, and it's doing a lot of listening," Halbrook said.
"If something ever happened to them in any other situation, they [need to] know they have that open line of communication with their parent or their caregiver or some other safe, trusted adult, and that these are conversations that they can have without fear of getting in trouble or feeling ashamed and that they're going to receive help when they come forward," Halbrook added.
Halbrook explained that the Quillen case in particular is difficult because he was put in a position of authority over children.
"We are always saddened to hear when we have adults who are put in positions to be safe people for our kids and our students and our community violate those boundaries with their children," Halbrook said.
Perry shared that if information is ever received about child abuse allegations, there is a multi-step process the district goes through, noting that anonymous tips aren't always acted on and that information must be credible.
"We're going to immediately put that person on administrative leave. We get them out of the classroom so they can do no harm to kids, and kids can't do any harm to them. The second thing that we'll do is we'll contact law enforcement and let them know. The third thing that we're going to do. If it's credible, we will turn it into the child ethics and child safe, and then we'll call the ethics board if necessary," Perry said.
"We can't control what folks do with adults, but we do have extremely high expectations with relationships with minors, and we will not tolerate that at all. And what we tell our folks is that we have extreme loyalty to you, but our loyalty to kids or to students is far greater than that, so we'll protect you, but if you've done something against the kid, then we're going to prosecute you," Perry added.
Perry reiterated that the safety of children is the district's top concern, and that inappropriate behavior is not tolerated. He said that when they figured out about Quillen's alleged behavior with children he was pulled from the classroom immediately.
Quillen is expected in Benton County court on Nov. 12.
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