QUESTIONS REMAIN

After Cypert was arrested, the investigation turned to whether administrators had properly responded to allegations.

BY JIM HOUSTON AND DIMON KENDRICK-HOLMES --

The young woman considered the detective’s question: While she was a student at Columbus High School, did she have a sexual relationship with James Gary Cypert Jr., her English teacher?

Her principal had asked the same question almost two years earlier, pulling her from the lineup during graduation rehearsal at the Civic Center. She had said no. She and Mr. Cypert were just friends, she had said. Mr. Cypert was a friend to all his students.

Now she looked at the detective. She had just turned 21, and her life was not what she had hoped it would be.

No, she said. We were just friends.

The detective , Joyc e D e n t - Fitzpatrick of the Columbus Police Department, did not end the interview. Months earlier, one of the young woman’s classmates — Girl No. 1 — had reported being “emotionally manipulated” by Cypert, whom she said had kissed her and promised to leave his wife for her. Dent-Fitzpatrick found Cypert’s behavior “inappropriate” but not prosecutable under state child abuse laws.

But Girl No. 1 had mentioned something else: Cypert did have a sexual relationship with another student during her senior year.

Dent-Fitzpatrick had tracked down that student — Girl No. 2 — and was sitting with her now.

A police veteran of 21 years — eight of those with the sex crimes unit — and a doctoral candidate in leadership, Dent-Fitzpatrick kept talking with the young woman, asking questions, getting to know her. Girl No. 2 sat there, talking. Listening. And then she began to cry. Yes. It was true. “I thought I had put everything b eh i n d m e , ” s h e t o l d t h e detective.

The young woman told Dent-Fitzpatrick how Cypert’s offer to help with schoolwork after she’d been sick had led to kisses, love notes and promises of divorce and marriage. They’d had sex in a portable classroom and at his house.

And while in the Cypert home, Girl No. 2 had taken photographs of the teacher, and she still had them.

About two weeks later — on April 30, 2007 — James Cypert was arrested at the high school and charged with sexual assault against a person in his custody.

But the investigation wasn’t over.

Police were realizing that about two years earlier Columbus High School Principal Susan Bryant had heard allegations that Cypert was having improper relationships with two female students and had conducted her own investigation.

In May of 2005, Bryant decided that though Cypert had used poor judgment, he had not had a sexual relationship with Girl No. 2 student. Bryant reported her findings to Don Cooper, the district’s chief human resource officer.

According to records the Ledger-Enquirer obtained under the Georgia Open Records Act, neither Bryant nor district administrators forwarded the allegations to investigators.

Assistant District Attorney Stacey Jackson said that based on what administrators knew, misdemeanor charges of failure to report sexual abuse could have been filed.

In fact, a warrant was issued for Bryant’s arrest in July of 2007. It was never served because the state’s two-year statute of limitations on the offense had expired.

 

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