Colorado Springs officer's girlfriend pleads guilty to sexually assaulting minor

Zachary Dupont, The Gazette (Colorado Springs, Colo.)
·2 min read

Oct. 31—The ex-girlfriend of a Colorado Springs police officer pleaded guilty Monday to sexually assaulting a child.

"I had sexual intercourse with the named victim," Kristen Wessel, 31, told Judge Jill Brady while pleading guilty to one charge of sexual assault against a minor under the age of 15 years old.

As part of the plea agreement, all other charges will be dismissed, including three misdemeanor counts of violating a restraining order, Brady said.

Previous reporting by The Gazette details that Wessel had sex with a teenage boy four times in December 2021. According to arrest records, Wessel would take the boy shopping, pick up his homework and go to his house "even when no other kids where there."

Wessel's boyfriend at the time was Officer Shane Reed, who after finding out about Wessel having sex with the boy assaulted him on a late January evening.

The teen told police that on the night of the assault, he was bicycling with a friend when Reed, 30, pulled up in a truck, grabbed him and dragged him to a fence, where Reed pressed up against the teen and said he would "kill him, and nobody would find his body," the document stated. The boy said Reed pinned him against the fence for about 20 minutes, adding that he believed Reed would have killed him if there had been no witnesses.

Reed pleaded guilty to one count of misdemeanor child abuse in July and received two years of unsupervised probation and 50 hours of community service as a penalty, according to court records. Reed's remaining charges — including second-degree kidnapping, third-degree assault and menacing — were dismissed as part of the plea agreement.

Colorado Springs police spokesperson Robert Tornabene said Reed is still employed by the Police Department and is on paid administrative leave pending an internal investigation.

Wessel now awaits a sentencing hearing, scheduled for Jan. 23, to determine her punishment for the charge of sexually assaulting a child.

Brady said she will impose a sentence of 10 years to life on sex offender intensive supervised probation, along with either a jail sentence or a community corrections sentence.

Wessel will also have to register as a sex offender for the rest of her life, Brady said.

Wessel is being held at the El Paso County jail on a $140,000 bond.