LITTLE ROCK — A former private-school superintendent pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge for failing to notify authorities that a school principal was suspected of having sex with a student.
Russell Darin Eudy, the former leader of Sylvan Hills First Baptist Church’s Abundant Life School, was fined $500 and sentenced to one year of probation in exchange for his guilty plea to first-degree failure to notify by a mandated reporter, said Pulaski County deputy prosecutor Jeanna Sherrill.
Eudy is the first in Pulaski County to be prosecuted on the failure-to-report charge under Arkansas Code 12-18-201, a law passed in 2009 as part of the Child Maltreatment Act. Arkansas has 30 categories of people who are required to report suspected cases of abuse or neglect, including law enforcement officers, clergy members, teachers and school counselors, medical personnel involved in admitting patients, and child-care and foster-care workers. The charge carries at most a year in jail.
His guilty plea comes about six weeks after the school’s former coach and principal, 40-year-old Timothy Ray Ballard of Benton, dropped his legal challenges to all charges over allegations he’d been having sex with two students, molesting one girl over a two-year period starting when she was 16 and, beginning a year later, molesting a second girl over an eight-month period when she was 17.
In exchange for his nocontest pleas to one count of first-degree sexual assault and four counts of seconddegree sexual assault, Ballard was sentenced to two months in jail, fined $1,000, required to register as a sex offender, ordered to stay away from his victims and serve five years on probation. Prosecutors also required Ballard, who has family in Texas, to waive extradition in the event he’s ever accused of probation violations.
The 49-year-old Eudy, as the school superintendent, had good reason to suspect Ballard, the school’s principal, was sexually involved with the second student for at least six months, between Sept. 1, 2009, and Feb. 24, 2010, but did not tell authorities, according to court filings.
Ballard had been put on administrative leave a week before police were called after Eudy and Sylvan Hills pastor Keith Brickell got an email from another girl, a third student, claiming that Ballard had an “inappropriate” relationship with her from seventh through 12th grades. Eudy told police the school had received a complaint about Ballard’s relationship with students as early as 11 years ago, court filings show.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 09/15/2011