Former drama teacher gets 90-day sentence
A former high school drama teacher was sentenced to 90 days in jail for attempted sexual assault of a child by a person in a position of trust.
Gabriel Alsina, 37, was sentenced last week to jail followed by five years of sex offender intensive supervised probation, according to an Arapahoe County district attorney’s news release. Alsina must now register as a sex offender and surrender his teaching license.
Alsina pleaded guilty June 8 to attempted sex assault on a child by one in a position of trust, a felony, according to the release. Other counts were dismissed as part of the plea agreement.
Alsina was the drama teacher at Vista Peak High School in Aurora when he met his victim, who was his student, according to the release. Prosecutors said Alsina assaulted the victim at school, in his car and in his home over a two-year period.
“Adults should never manipulate children and take advantage of them, but he took advantage of her for his own ego,” Deputy District Attorney Lisa Gramer said in the news release. “Parents send their kids to school thinking their children are going to be safe. The teacher should not be one of the things they are afraid of.”
The victim and her parents also spoke before Arapahoe County District Court Judge Shay Whitaker.
“I was sexually abused by a teacher who wheedled his way into my heart,” the victim said. “His hands were constantly touching me in ways no adult should be touching a child. A teacher meant to protect me was the one hurting me.
“I silenced myself for a predator. … Now I want justice for the little girl he hurt.”
Kieran Nicholson: 303-954-1822, knicholson@denverpost.com or @kierannicholson
RENO, NEV.» The federal Bureau of Land Management has approved construction of three new corrals to hold more than 8,000 wild horses captured on federal rangeland to accelerate horse roundups slowed by a lack of space in existing holding pens.
The bureau issued final decisions on environmental assessments of the plans this week for the pens in Colorado, Wyoming and Utah.
The pens are the next step in plans announced last year by the administration of President Donald Trump to speed up the capture of 130,000 wild horses over 10 years at an estimated cost of $1 billion.
Backers include the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and American Farm Bureau Federation, which have pushed for the slaughter of excess horses that compete for forage with livestock grazing on U.S. lands.
Objecting to the corrals are wild horse advocates who insist the mustangs should remain in the wild and that the money would be better spent on horse fertility controls, like darting mares on the range with contraceptive drugs.
“Expanding capacity to hold captured mustangs is the first step to implementing this administration’s reckless plan to round up the vast majority of the West’s wild horses and burros,” American Wild Horse Campaign spokeswoman Grace Kuhn said.
Her group is considering an appeal, which would have to be filed within 30 days. The government currently holds about 50,000 horses in offrange corrals and pastures at an annual cost of about $50 million.
About 95,000 remain on the range. That is “more than triple the number of animals the land can sustainably support in balance with other public resource values, including wildlife, recreation, livestock grazing, energy resource development and others,” the bureau said Wednesday.
With virtually no predators, the horse population can double every four to five years, the agency said. Agency officials have said the appropriate number of horses roaming free — called “appropriate management level,” with the acronym AML — is about 27,000.