HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (Waffle) – DeKalb County sex crime victims are suing their former high school teacher and basketball coach after he spent years sexually grooming them.

One of the victims and his father filed the lawsuit Tuesday against Dustin Dalton, 32, who just finished a three-year prison sentence in June.

Dalton — a former sixth-grade math teacher and basketball coach at Sylvania High School — pleaded guilty to three felony sex offenses in 2021 after it was revealed he began sexually abusing two of his students/sex players male when they were 12 and 13 years old. .

The lawsuit goes into detail about Dalton’s behavior with the children, alleging that Dalton sent sexually explicit Snapchat messages to both boys. This included sending links to porn sites and images of his genitals before asking the children for photos of themselves.

Both children appeared before the school counselor with evidence on October 2, 2020, and Dalton resigned later that Friday before being arrested the following Monday.

The trial also focused on the failure of school leaders to protect their students.

It says that in 2016 — four years before Dalton resigned — a mother spoke to Sylvania High School Principal Wesley King with concerns about Dalton’s relationship with her sixth-grade son. She never heard back from King after that day.

One of the school’s basketball coaches later raised his own concerns about overnight parties for students and players at his home, but even then the school system took no action.

Eric Artrip is a victim advocate and has covered school sexual abuse cases for years. He says this is far from the first time school officials have failed to protect their students from predators.

“Educators in general often enjoy a code of silence among themselves, where these things are kept close to the vest and they maintain some denial later down the road,” Artrip said.

After Dalton resigned in 2020, school leaders did not immediately send a report to law enforcement, which the lawsuit says violates Alabama’s Mandatory Reporting Act.

He then states that Dalton was offered the chance to return to school for his belongings the next day before getting rid of the cell phone. He was arrested two days later.

Artrip says what Dalton did will haunt the victims for the rest of their lives, but hopefully exposing all the guilty parties here will bring them closure.

“I think what we can help them do is find out the truth and find out what people knew and when they knew it,” he said. “Could this have been prevented or could it have been stopped sooner so they didn’t have to go through what they went through?”

DeKalb County Superintendent Jason Barnett and Principal King left their jobs after Dalton’s arrest in 2020. While King retired, Barnett now holds the position of superintendent in the Guntersville school system.

“It’s a troubling fact of these types of cases that these people — even if they’re aware of this type of behavior — can still find a place in our education system,” Artrip said.

He plans to target Barnett, King and other Sylvania school officials in a separate lawsuit in the coming months.

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