Venice high school coach investigated for inappropriate touching, police say
Venice Police said they investigated an assistant high school football coach for allegedly touching female students inappropriately, but did not charge him because there was not enough evidence and the behavior did not constitute criminal conduct.
Meanwhile, the Sarasota County School District said that the coach, Brian Ryals, who coaches quarterbacks for Venice High, has been placed on leave while an internal investigation is conducted.
According to police, two students alleged that they would hang out with Ryals in his office, where he would touch their buttocks while they were fully clothed after "play fighting" or hugging during their sophomore and junior years.
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Because both of the student victims were 16 to 17 years old when the coach allegedly touched them, a felony lewd and lascivious molestation charge does not apply, police said. Also, police in the report stated that calling and asking 18-year-old former students to meet and wrestle does not fall in a criminal category.
"The charge of misdemeanor battery on both victims was investigated, but at this time, the available circumstantial evidence does not rise to the level of probable cause for an arrest," police said in the report.
Officials said the case had been closed but would be reopened if they determined there was evidence of a crime
According to the report, at the end of the last school year, Ryals kept telling one of the students that he would be asking her to do something, but he wasn't sure if she would say yes or if he could trust her.
The coach contacted the alleged victims by phone and said he was getting a wrestling certification and needed to record himself wrestling with them.
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According to the report he asked them to meet him at Venice High over the weekend of Aug. 5-7, to wear only a sports bra and tight shorts, to bring a change of clothes and to not to tell anybody, officials said in the report.
The students never met up with the coach, and police were contacted to investigate after a complaint was filed.
The complainant whose information led to the investigation told officials that the contact raised questions, among other issues. According to the report, the coach would only have photos of girls on his bulletin board and would be upset if one of the victims wore a sports bra and spandex when weightlifting in front of the football team.
During the investigation, officials said they found inappropriate text messages between one of the students and Ryal. Most of them occurred between 9 and 10 p.m. throughout 2020-21.
Text messages between one of the students and Ryals showed that they said they loved each other, the report said.
The other victim said that she got so upset when he asked her to wrestle that she deleted his messages and contact information from her phone. She told officials that she didn't say anything about the coach sooner "because of the other case she was going through" and didn't see at the time that what the coach was doing was wrong.
When one of the victims was asked by investigators if he touched other girls in similar ways, she said that at one point he told her that someone told on him, and he could only give high-fives in the hallway.
After repeatedly being called out of classes to see him, one of the victims said that she had to ask him to stop because she was missing too much class time.
An attempt to reach Ryals for comment at a number included in the police report was unsuccessful.
In May police arrested former Venice High soccer coach Edward Delehanty for sexual battery after beginning a sexual relationship with a student on the team.
This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Venice police: High school coach investigated for touching students
