CAMPBELL COUNTY, Tenn. — During the 2015-2016 school year, one Campbell County seventh-grader felt special.
Assistant Principal Jason James "treated her like an adult or an actual human rather than a 12-year-old seventh-grader," she wrote in a statement to the Campbell County Sheriff's Office.
She didn't think much more of it until a few years later when she became Facebook friends with James. Documents show he first messaged her on July 24, 2019.
"Anytime I posted a picture he would message me," she wrote. "Especially if I was wearing my glasses, he'd call me a nerd or comment about the picture aggravating me."
Authorities found the two communicated 20 times while she was still a student. James had initiated 17 of those communications — or roughly 85 percent.
"I don’t recall inappropriate messages when she was a student," James said in a statement to investigators. "Text messages may have been flirtatious at best. It was never initiated by me, and I would fend her off."
He said he was never alone with her while she was a student. After she turned 18 years old, that changed.
"He said many times that it was completely inappropriate after she turned 18," investigators wrote. "At this point, he’s asked for help."
After she graduated, the girl told investigators that James told her "he knew when [she] was in 7th grade that [she] was going to be a piece of ass."
At first, she said he asked her for pictures of herself in her bra and panties. Then he wanted her to touch herself. In August 2021, she wrote that he said he wished there was a way he could sneak her into his office at CCHS to have sex with him in his office.
She wrote that he had three rules: no catching feelings, birth control, and keep her mouth shut. Eventually, she went to his house.
That's when her mom noticed her daughter was at an address in Caryville, documents show. She realized it was James' house and contacted school administrators.
"The day I reported this to you I was just as upset at my daughter as I was anyone," she wrote to administrators in a follow-up email in February 2022. "I was angry because I had trusted this person as an honorable teacher/administrator that generally cared for students both current and past ... the things I seen and read on her phone disgusted me to no end."
Jason James resigned from the district in February after 17 weeks of unpaid suspension. The Tennessee Board of Education is currently reviewing his licenses to determine whether he's fit to be an educator again.