James Bringham - Booking photo/Cobb County Sheriff
Trudie Donovan - Booking photo/Cobb County Sheriff
Brigham was booked into Cobb Jail on Thursday night on a felony charge of sexual battery and two counts of misdemeanor simple battery. He was released early Friday on $25,000 bond.
He is married and lives in Woodstock, according to jail records. He did not return a phone message for comment left at his home Friday.
In addition to the May 17 incident, he is accused of slapping a student’s face with an open hand on May 14, which resulted in one of the battery charges, according to the warrant. In the other instance, he is accused of caressing the arm of a student and saying, “Don’t act like you don’t like it,” according to the warrant. That allegedly happened sometime between May 1 and May 25, according to the warrant, and also occurred inside a classroom.
Trudie Donovan, 61, the longtime principal at Kell High School who suddenly announced her retirement earlier this month, was booked into the Cobb County Jail on Thursday night on a charge of failing to report child abuse, a misdemeanor. School personnel are mandated to report suspected abuse within 24 hours. Donovan turned herself in about 7 p.m. Thursday and was released just before midnight that night on $1,000 bond.
She did not immediately return a phone message left at her home seeking comment.
Cobb School District spokesman Jay Dillon declined to comment on the case Thursday night. District offices are closed on Fridays during the summer.
Donovan is the second Cobb principal charged this year with failure to report suspected abuse. In March, former Tapp Middle School Principal Dr. Jerry Dority and a counselor at that school were charged with failure to report suspected sexual abuse of a student. Both were fired by the district in April.
A note on Kell’s website references Donovan’s retirement but says nothing of the charges filed against her or Brigham.
“As many of you may already be aware, Ms. Donovan has decided that after 34 years of service in education and six years of leadership at Kell High School that it is time for her to embark on a new chapter of her life in retirement,” the note states. “As she has shared with us ‘her garden in the mountains is calling.’ Her last day at Kell High School will be on June 28th of this year. Rest assured she still plans on enjoying the students and community at Kell High School and will continue to support our programs that she loves so much. This includes assisting those students who would like tutoring in math.”
Donovan was named Kell’s principal in 2006 after serving as an associate principal at Harrison High for four years. She started in the Cobb County School District in 1978 as a teacher at Walton High, where she stayed until 2000. She also served as an administrative assistant and assistant principal at South Cobb High in her 30-plus years with the district.
Prosecutors say Donovan will make her first court appearance in mid-August. If convicted, she faces a maximum sentence of 12 months in jail and a $1,000 fine.
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Government schools turning out more criminal students.
Being a teacher is like asking to be beaten.
Public schools are a hole in the ground where money is poured.
What a joke.
Bad grades have nothing to do with a selective pedophile. A teacher should NEVER flirt, touch, make obscene gestures or anything along those lines, EVER! You were not the person involved so you don't know what actually happened. I feel bad for the 2 actually involved. Give some credit to the ones with enough nerve to come forward. Look at the hell that they are enduring, if proven to be true.
Innocent until proven guilty.
This nonsense crude about not identifying victims of sex crimes is hog wash. The MDJ never comes back later and tells us when the unidentified "victims" are shown to have been lying or that the "predator" (typically a man) was not really the predator that the original article led every one to believe.
On the other hand, any man teaching/working in a high school had better be on guard against the criminal/pathological students that seem so prevalent these days.