Middle school teacher jailed for sex with teens

NORRISTOWN » A Bucks County man who once worked as a Montgomery County middle school teacher has been sent to state prison after admitting he had sexual contact with two teenage female students.

Jason Todd Gattuso, 40, of the 200 block of East Fairwood Drive, New Britain Township, Bucks County, was sentenced in Montgomery County Court to six to 12 years in a state correctional facility on charges of statutory sexual assault, institutional sexual assault and involuntary deviate sexual intercourse in connection with incidents that occurred between June 2014 and August 2015 while he was an eighth-grade social studies teacher at Springfield Township Middle School.

Judge Garrett D. Page also ordered Gattuso to complete five years of probation following parole, meaning Gattuso will be under court supervision for 17 years. Gattuso also faces a lifetime requirement to report his address to state police.

Gattuso, a married father of one child, will receive credit for the time he’s been in jail since his arrest in July 2016.

Defense lawyer Thomas C. Egan III previously said Gattuso voluntarily resigned from the school district, surrendered his state teaching certificate and cooperated with police.

Gattuso, according to Egan, was a star football player at Central Bucks West High School and a starter on the football team at Villanova University, from which he graduated. Egan previously said Gattuso served honorably in the Army, during which he served in Iraq in combat and after which he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.

At the time of Gattuso’s guilty plea in March Egan said Gattuso was extremely remorseful.

An investigation began in June 2016, after one girl told police that between September and November 2014, while she was 15 and in ninth grade, Gattuso began sending her text messages and emails. The text messages later “became sexual in nature and escalated to sending and receiving multiple nude or sexually suggestive pictures,” according to the arrest affidavit filed by police from Springfield and Whitemarsh townships.

In January 2015, Gattuso offered to help the girl study for midterm exams at her home, where the two then engaged in sexual intercourse, according to the criminal complaint.

A second girl told police that while in ninth grade, she and Gattuso began a similar relationship that included exchanging sexually charged text messages and photos, according to the arrest affidavit.

Over the course of 13 months, July 2014 to August 2015, the second girl and Gattuso engaged in sexual intercourse 15 to 20 times during encounters that occurred in numerous parking lots, including at the Holiday Inn and the Fort Washington Train Station in Whitemarsh and at DeVry University in Upper Dublin, according to the criminal complaint. The girl was 14 years old when the sexual conduct began, police alleged.

When confronted by police about the girls’ allegations, Gattuso confessed to the inappropriate relationships, court documents indicate.