A former Centennial private school teacher will spend 60 years in prison for assaulting children, according to court records.
Christopher Ballard, a 28-year-old man who worked with middle-school-aged students at Journey Academy, took a deal and pleaded guilty in October to first-degree assault causing serious bodily injury with a deadly weapon in two separate cases, according to Douglas County court records.
Those two charges come with a “stipulated sexual factor basis,” according to copies of Ballard’s plea agreements.
Ballard’s plea deals dropped more than four dozen felony charges from his cases, including child sexual exploitation, unlawful sexual contact with a child, sexual assault on a child by one in a position of trust in a pattern of abuse and promoting obscenity to a minor, court records show.
The charges stem from Ballard’s time teaching at the private school, where he allegedly touched students inappropriately, showed them pornography and made them run around naked, according to Ballard’s arrest affidavits. The incidents took place at various locations, including the school, a rural conference center and homes in Parker.
Students and their parents told investigators that Ballard had also played strip poker with the children, offered them money to take off their clothes or let him touch them and given at least one student candy in exchange for videos of the student pulling down their pants and underwear, according to the arrest affidavit.
Ballard also assaulted a minor at a church in Highlands Ranch, where he served as a youth leader, the arrest affidavit stated.
“The defendant (Ballard) agrees that there is a factual basis for the original charges in this case,” both plea deal documents read. “The defendant agrees that he is pleading guilty to the assault in the first-degree charge for the benefit of the bargain.”
Douglas County District Court Judge Elizabeth Beebe Volz sentenced Ballard on Jan. 16 to 30 years in the Colorado Department of Corrections in both cases, sentences that will run consecutively for a total of 60 years, according to court records. The maximum possible sentence on each count was 32 years.
Ballard will also be required to undergo sex offender treatment and testing, according to the plea agreements.
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