Girl offers emotional testimony as her former Olathe teacher is sentenced for stalking

After nearly an hour of emotional testimony and legal argument, a former Olathe public schools teacher was sentenced Wednesday to one year in the Johnson County jail for stalking one of his fourth-grade students, a 10-year-old girl who James D. Loganbill photographed fully clothed surreptitiously for his sexual gratification.

District Court Judge Thomas Sutherland ordered that Loganbill, 60, be required to register as a sex offender for the next 15 years and noted that he was handing out the maximum sentence for the misdemeanor charge. Stalking has since been upgraded to a felony by the Kansas Legislature due to the circumstances of this case.

“This kind of conduct committed by anyone is reprehensible,” Sutherland said from the bench, but because he was a teacher it was even worse. Upon learning of the behavior, the girl’s young classmates were also traumatized, he said.

“Your antics victimized multiple young girls and their families.”

Loganbill was taken into custody after the court hearing, but a bond hearing is set for Tuesday when his defense attorney will argue that he should be freed pending the outcome of an expected appeal.

Dozens of parents, former students and others watched the sentencing on Zoom as supporters of the girl and her family sat in the courtroom, all wearing pink in solidarity, to witness the outcome of the high-profile case against the 31-year teaching veteran.

“I started fourth grade like most other kids, and I came out of fourth grade with my innocence taken,” the girl identified in court documents as A.A. said in her prepared remarks. “I had to have conversations about grown up things that I was not ready to have. I felt scared, embarrassed, humiliated and fearful of adults.”

Loganbill admitted to Olathe police in March 2020 that he was sexually aroused by the girl in his fourth-grade class at Meadow Lane Elementary School, especially when she wore black leggings or dance pants. He took photographs and videos of her from the waist down when she was in his class and on the playground.

Investigators found more than 200 photos and videos of A.A. on his phone and other electronic devices.

School officials brought Loganbill’s behavior to the attention of law enforcement after A.A.’s classmates told their parents that they had noticed him photographing their friend when she wasn’t looking. Loganbill acknowledged to police that what he had done was “creepy” and “morally wrong,” police said, but that he had never touched the girl.

He was charged that June with stalking, which at the time was a misdemeanor. Based on this case, Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe, the girl’s family and others successfully urged the legislature to tweak the law and upgrade the crime to a felony.

At trial, attorney Carl Cornwell argued that his client’s actions did not fit the crime with which he was charged. Stalking required the victim to be in fear for their safety at the time they were being stalked, he said, and the girl didn’t know of Loganbill’s activity until after it had been brought to the attention of authorities.

Sutherland did not agree with that reasoning, ruling that it was enough that she was fearful after learning she was the subject of Loganbill’s sexual desires. Cornwell’s contention will be one basis of the appeal.

A.A. said at the trial that she was still scared of Loganbill more than a year after his actions came to light. She scolded her former teacher during the sentencing for making her feel that way as Loganbill hung his head and made no eye contact with her as he sat at the defense table.

“A child should never be made to feel like this by an adult, especially not by their teacher,” she said. “Kids deserve to be kept safe. Kids are meant not to be preyed on. You had a job to protect your students, but instead you used us.”

While convicted of victimizing only one of his students during the 2019-2020 school year, the girl and her mother said Loganbill had been preying on young girls for much of his career. A number of former students contacted the family after the case made the news in the summer of 2020.

Some who were students of his as far back as the 1990s said they were uncomfortable about the way he doted on them.

The Star reported last fall that, in 2011, a group of cheerleaders at Pioneer Trail Middle School, also in the Olathe district, complained to administrators that Loganbill was overly familiar with them.

He showered particular attention on one girl, which made her uncomfortable. After an internal investigation, he left the school that fall for substitute work at other Olathe schools before being reassisgned to Meadow Lane.

A former special victims detective with the Lenexa police force, Shannon Leeper, told the court that Olathe district officials who knew of Loganbill’s history bore some level of responsibility for his later actions.

“You all should be ashamed,” said Leeper. She said her then 9-year-old daughter had been one of A.A.’s classmates and later recalled how Loganbill would fist bump the boys in the class, but “would greet her with a hug and run his hand down her back to her buttocks.”

Before passing sentence, Sutherland ruled that Loganbill’s offense met the legal definition of a sexually motivated crime and was, therefore, subject to the state’s sexual offender registration law.

Cornwell said there is no question that his client is “a broken man’’ and remorseful. On more than one occasion Loganbill has questioned whether he has a right to live. He is in counseling, Cornwell said, “solely for the purpose of him not offing himself.”

Cornwell asked Sutherland for leniency, noting that Loganbill had never been convicted of a crime before this case. Since retiring from teaching, Loganbill has been working construction to help support his family.

In his appeal, Cornwell plans to argue that what Loganbill did was morally wrong, but not a crime under Kansas law.