An elementary school teacher in Cheyenne was jailed Monday on suspicion of touching multiple female students inappropriately during the past school year.
Brian Wrhel, 55, was booked into the Laramie County Detention Center on Monday, the sheriff’s office confirmed Tuesday.
That was about a week after Laramie County Deputy District Attorney William Edelman charged Wrhel with 16 sex crimes, all felonies.
Seven of those are third-degree sexual abuse of a minor and carry a maximum penalty of up to 15 years in prison and $10,000 each. Nine are second-degree sexual abuse of a minor charges, each carrying a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and $10,000 in fines.
Cheyenne Circuit Court released a redacted affidavit and information to Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday, which was confirmed independently to refer to Wrhel.
The case started when someone at a Laramie County School District No. 1 elementary school (name of the school redacted) called the Cheyenne Police Department to report sexual abuse of a minor, according to an evidentiary affidavit by CPD Detective Damon Hall.
The principal, a 50-year-old man (name redacted), told the responding officer that school staff became aware the week prior that a fifth grade teacher had been touching students inappropriately in class.
“An internal investigation was conducted prior to law enforcement notification,” wrote Hall, and the suspect was placed on leave May 16.
Multiple Potential Victims
Investigators identified multiple potential victims, all girls, and arranged for them to be interviewed forensically at Safe Harbor.
Some girls in their forensic interviews described their teacher touching their bottoms, breasts, genitalia, torsos, thighs and backs during class, wrote Hall.
Repeatedly, the girls who allegedly suffered this touching also noticed when Wrhel did it to others, the document alleges.
The teacher’s inappropriate touching happened at his desk, which sat in the back of the class, especially when a girl would go to him for help with schoolwork, Hall related from those interviews.
One girl, whom the others identified as most frequently victimized, said her teacher would touch her “private part” under her pants, and it felt “uncomfortable and weird.”
She said the teacher unclipped another girl’s bra, according to the document.
“Small things,” or more minor, inappropriate touching, started around October 2024, but the touching progressed to where the teacher was touching the girl inappropriately every day, two or three times a day, wrote Hall.
When the “under the clothes touch” started, the girl identified as the most frequent victim said she was scared and didn’t want to go back to school, the document says. The girl also wondered to herself “if this, like, was allowed and do teachers do this to their students?”
Another girl said the teacher put his hand up her shirt “three times each week” and down her pants “four times in one week,” wrote Hall.
The Para
The document says an investigator interviewed a special education paraeducator — a female in her early 30s — on May 29.
The para was assigned to Wrhel’s classroom to help full-time with a special-needs student.
She noticed early in the school year that the teacher was “a little more touchy with the girls than he should have been,” and she asked another colleague to keep an eye on it, says the affidavit.
The touching would start with his hand on the back of a girl’s arm. Girl students would approach the teacher’s desk, and he’d rub their backs “for long periods of time,” Hall related from that interview.
When the touching continued, then “escalated” toward the end of the school year, the para reported the behavior to the principal.
This was around May 6 or May 8, the para recalled.
That same day, she noticed the teacher rubbing a girl’s right thigh while sitting at his desk, the para told the investigator.
Also around that timeframe, the para noticed the teacher resting his right hand between a girl’s legs, “maybe three inches from her vagina,” the document alleges.
At some point the girl clasped her hands in her lap, preventing the man from keeping his hand there, the document relates from the para’s interview.
One girl told the forensic interviewer that she noticed the teacher touching girls’ legs, sides, arms and thighs, but she had never before had a “boy teacher” and didn’t know if that was normal, wrote Hall.
One time, that same girl was sitting by the teacher, working, and he rubbed her thigh, she recalled.
“When Ms. S. came over he immediately removed his hand ‘as if he knew he was doing something wrong,’” Hall related from the interview.
After the first time the teacher touched the girl, she tried not to sit next to him unless she was wearing pants, the affidavit says.
The teacher would also “rub circles” on the flesh under her shirt, she said, according to the document.
The affidavit says one girl described watching the teacher slide his hand up the back of another girl’s shirt, and the girl had “fear in her eyes” and looked uncomfortable.
The Civil Suit
Wrhel worked at Jessup Elementary School as recently as 2021, when he was sued alongside other school officials due to disputes surrounding his handling of COVID-19 policies. One student had alleged that Wrhel harassed her over her anxiety about wearing a mask, but the suing attorney later dropped the claims against Wrhel.
Publicly available information indicates, however, that Wrhel was not at Jessup in the most recent school year, as that school's principal is a woman, not the 50-year-old man referenced in court documents.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
