A New Jersey middle school social studies teacher already arrested, fired, and indicted on child sexual assault charges was again indicted this week with more disturbing allegations for her role in a carnal relationship that her young victim said “destroyed things inside me.”
Ashley Fisler, 36, of Washington Township, now faces a 12-count indictment that also includes sexual assault of a minor, a pattern of official misconduct, and manufacturing child sexual abuse material, per the Gloucester County Prosecutor’s Office, according to the New York Post.
The outlet is reporting the victim was an 8th grader.
As Breitbart News reported in its ongoing investigation of educator sexual misconduct, Fisler was arrested in March on charges of having an alleged sexual relationship with the minor at the Orchard Valley Middle School in Mantua Township, a semi-rural suburb south of Philadelphia.
Prosecutors said the victim, who is now an adult, described multiple sexual encounters that allegedly took place in Fisler’s vehicle and classroom in 2021.
Investigators have said they have recovered text messages that detail the relationship, including 7,500 pages of often sexually explicit text messages to the victim after he entered high school, NJ Advance Media reported.
In one of them, the student wrote to Fisler that she had left him “mentally broken,” as that outlet described it.
“You destroyed things inside of me,” he reportedly wrote in one text. “You stripped me of my innocence.”
Defense attorney Rocco Cipparone has argued in previous court proceedings that prosecutors lack evidence to support the allegations, claiming the text messages were misleading in the way they were presented by prosecutors.
“The selective, salacious texts that were recited by the prosecution lack context,” Cipparone argued.
However, Gloucester County Assistant Prosecutor Kylie Finley countered they revealed a manipulative effort to sexually ensnare the boy.
“These text messages show not only the level of the grooming and manipulation by this defendant, but they also corroborate multiple times over, the sexual relationship disclosed by this victim, including the specific sexual acts that the victim disclosed to police during his interview,” Finley told the court.
Fisler was initially charged with six counts of first-degree sexual assault of a minor, one count of second-degree endangering the welfare of a child, and one count of second-degree official misconduct, according to news outlets.
The superseding indictment added charges of “second-degree pattern of official misconduct, first-degree manufacturing child sexual abuse material, third-degree possession of child sexual abuse material, and third-degree distribution of obscenity to a minor,” the Post reported.
A first-degree charge carries a maximum sentence of twenty years in prison, second degree a maximum of ten, and third degree a maximum sentence of five years.
Fisler taught social studies in the Washington Township School District from 2014 until June 2023, according to an online resume cited by the Post.
Fisler is not alone as an educator facing sexual abuse allegations in the Garden State.
Nearly two dozen sex crime cases involving teachers and coaches, both male and female, reportedly are in various stages of prosecution in New Jersey in recent years alone.
As Breitbart News reported in an exclusive investigation earlier this year, leading researchers report in studies that “educator sexual misconduct” has become rampant in the past two decades in school districts across the United States.
The disturbing pattern is occurring in school districts large and small, urban and rural, public and private.
Causes cited range from a “culture of permissiveness,” to the ability of teachers and students to communicate secretly on the internet, and the reluctance of staff to report suspicious behavior in fear of disrupting school harmony.
Veteran crime writer Lowell Cauffiel is the author of the New York Times true crime best seller House of Secrets , which documents one of the worst cases of child sex abuse in U.S. history, and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.