COLOMBIA, SC – Richland County sheriff Leon Lott and internal investigators protected a deputy from 2010 to 2019 that they had reason to know was a sexual predator, lawyers claimed in a civil suit this week in a lawsuit.
Protecting the now ex-deputy, who was basically a school resource officer, was a cover-up to save the Richland County Sheriff’s Department from embarrassment and liability, according to the documents.
Lott and Captain John E. Ewing, the former deputy supervisor, “deliberately and systematically concealed Mr Bradley’s predatory nature and hid his own knowledge of his predatory nature,” the document said.
The lawsuit alleged that internal investigations into the former deputy were inadequate and that Lott and Ewing ignored evidence that Bradley had inappropriate relationships and possibly sexually abused a student. That evidence included a polygraph test flown by the former deputy and emails with students that lawyers described as clearly suspicious.
The number of times Bradley has been accused of inappropriate interactions with female students in those nine years would have reasonably proved to Lott and Ewing that the deputy was abusing students, according to the documents. Department officials have minimized these incidents in ways that indicate a cover-up.
In response, the department said that Lott maintains the comments he made after Bradley’s arrest in November 2019. At that time, Lott said: “I’m sick of just thinking that this girl was the victim of one of my former deputies. No child should be subjected to this, and I am disgusted that it happened to someone who was entrusted with protecting our children. “
“We don’t ignore that,” said Lott at the time. “As soon as it got our attention … we started.”
“It was the results of the internal investigations that led to his dismissal and subsequent arrest,” said a department spokesman on Friday.
Bradley worked with the department from 2010 to 2019, primarily as a school resources officer at Spring Valley High School. The department fired and accused Bradley of third-degree criminal sexual conduct in late 2019. He accused him of sexual assault a few months later. The deputies accused Bradley of sexually assaulting at least two teenage students from Spring Valley.
Two lawsuits have also been filed against the Sheriff’s Department and officials from District 2 of Richland. One of the lawsuits was closed last year for $ 900,000.
Wednesday’s filing involves another process. The department had asked a judge to reject the lawsuit because it was moved beyond the statute of limitations. On Wednesday, the plaintiff’s lawyers replied that the potential for a cover-up justifies late filing.
The lawsuit detailed seven incidents from 2010 to 2019 that lawyers argue would be warning signs for Lott and Ewing. The department’s response to these incidents was deficient to the point of “hiding” it.
In 2011, Bradley was accused of habitually “flirting” with a cheerleader, records show. A Spring Valley cheerleader found Bradley’s interactions disturbing enough to have a conversation with the student about them.
The student told investigators in the sheriff’s department that she and Bradley talked on social media.
The plaintiff’s lawyers brought in a policing expert to examine the department’s internal and Bradley investigations. In the case of 2011, the expert found that the department stopped before a full investigation.
The suit claimed that the department never asked to see Bradley’s records on the internet or messages on social media to get a better idea of his relationship with the student.
An internal investigation by the department found that Bradley had not violated any rules of conduct in 2011.
The concealment of Bradley’s abuse continued in 2015 after he met at 10:30 pm with a student from Spring Valley, identified as Jane Doe 2 in the process, behind Target on Two Notch Road, according to the documents.
Two Richland drug investigators saw Bradley meeting with the student and, although his actions are not described, one of the investigators was concerned enough about what he testified to report to Bradley’s supervisor, Ewing.
Ewing wanted to see if Bradley’s story matched the student’s and interviewed the two separately. The lawsuit said the two stories did not match, but that Ewing ended his investigation, verbally scolded Bradley and told him to stay away from Jane Doe 2, unless it was in an emergency.
The policing expert considered the investigation into Bradley’s behavior with Jane Doe 2 “far below acceptable,” the suit said.
Ewing’s inquiry was unable to examine the emails between Bradley and Jane Doe 2, although the supervisor could have accessed those emails, according to the court document. These 2015 emails show that Bradley arranged to meet Jane Doe 2 before school hours; told her to delete a particular email because school officials could see it; and sent photos of himself to the student.
The emails showed that Bradley had a “casual” and “flirting” and possibly sexual relationship with the student, the document said.
In a deposition for the other lawsuit filed in 2018, Lott said that even after seeing that year’s emails, he still felt that Bradley’s relationship with Jane Doe 2 was not inappropriate, according to the filing.
In a separate complaint, a father in 2016 overheard his daughter and a friend discussing his friend’s relationship with Bradley. The father told a Spring Valley administrator that his daughter saw pictures of Bradley with his friend. The father thought that Bradley was having “sexual relations” with the student. The administrators eventually informed the sheriff’s department and the information was sent to Ewing.
The department opened an internal affairs investigation, which consisted of investigators asking Bradley seven questions and trying to speak to his father, the filing said. The meeting with the father never happened.
The internal investigation into this complaint did not clear Bradley of misconduct, labeling the findings as “unsustainable,” the suit said. If Bradley had been completely eliminated, the findings would have been labeled “unfounded”, according to the document.
Once again, the policing expert described the investigation as insufficient, saying the department should have taken more steps to obtain more information. “Simply trying to interview someone and getting nowhere is not an investigation.”
In March 2018, a 15-year-old sophomore was rumored in Spring Valley that she was pregnant with Bradley. A Spring Valley administrator asked her about the rumor, and the student said it was not true, “but it gave a clear indication that she had been sexually abused” by Bradley, according to the document.
A month later, the same student presented a hypothetical situation to the school administrator in which a girl was sexually abused by Bradley, but did not want to report him. The administrator believed that the hypothetical girl was the student and informed the sheriff’s department officials.
Ewing told Bradley to stay away from the student, unless she needed emergency help. The student’s complaints “were not taken seriously,” the suit said. Bradley remained a resource officer in Spring Valley.
Because of Bradley’s presence at school, the 15-year-old’s mental health deteriorated to the point where she was hospitalized for 50 days because of suicidal thoughts.
The student told a doctor in April 2018 that Bradley had sexually abused her, according to the lawsuit.
The sheriff’s department investigated Bradley again, who ran a lie detector test. He was considered “on purpose uncooperative” and the examiner considered him a liar, the suit said.
A department investigator believes Bradley touched the student, according to the court document. The department opened a criminal investigation into Bradley and found that he was “a liar to investigators”. Two of the department’s criminal investigators said they believed the student was being candid about Bradley’s assault.
But the criminal investigation was “closed mysteriously and abruptly” while one of the investigators was out of town, the document said. The investigation determined that there was not enough probable cause to arrest Bradley.
One of the investigators described Bradley as “above criticism,” the lawyers wrote in the lawsuit.
After the criminal investigation, Bradley, who had been transferred, returned as a resource officer in Spring Valley.
In a later testimony, Lott said that at the time of the polygraph test, he was not concerned that the operator believed that Bradley was lying.
The student’s mother, later labeled Jane Doe 1 in a civil suit, filed a legal request for the department’s records on Bradley. The department refused to release its records and the mother and Jane Doe 1 filed a lawsuit to obtain them, winning the case, the filing said. A judge said the sheriff’s department’s refusal to hand over Bradley’s records “had no legal or factual justification.”
This lack of transparency increased what the plaintiff’s attorney continually called “deliberate concealment” of Bradley’s actions in the lawsuits.
In a deposition in July 2019, Lott said he believed Bradley was innocent of all the charges against him and that Jane Doe 1 was being false.
“Do you believe my client’s (Jane Doe 1) claims are false?” asked the lawyer.
“That’s correct,” said Lott.
“So you support Deputy Bradley”
“That’s correct,” said Lott.
Four months later, after the department accused Bradley of sexually assaulting a student, Lott called him a “monster” who “hid behind the badge and my name all along.”
The department said the charge came after a testimony by Jane Doe 1 in her civil suit against the department.
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