Stonehill Student Denies Rape Charges

By Lisa E. Crowley
BrocktonPost
BROCKTON—A Stonehill College student has pleaded not guilty to charges he allegedly forcibly raped an 8-year-old girl at the Angelo Elementary School in Brockton.
According to Brockton District Court documents, Kevin P. Treseler, a student at Stonehill College and tutor at the Angelo School as a part of a work-study program, pleaded not guilty to two counts of rape of a child with force and two counts of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14.
Cash bail was set at $20,000. He also must have no contact with the victim or any child under 15.
Kristen Magda, associate director of communications and media relations for Stonehill College, said in a prepared statement Treseler has been suspended on an interim basis. She said the interim suspension will remain in effect until further investigation and is in accordance with the college’s Community Standards policies and procedures.
According to court documents, Brockton Police began an investigation Thursday, March 17 when police received a call from Signature Healthcare Brockton Hospital’s emergency department about the possibility of child abuse.
Court documents show the girl’s parents brought the third grader to the emergency room because of injuries sustained to the girl’s private area.
When police interviewed the girl, she told police a teacher in her classroom had touched her with his hand and fingers several times during class, sometimes over her clothes and sometimes under.
The girl told police the incidents happened when she, Treseler and some other students were at the back of the class room during math and reading class and out of view of another teacher who was at the front of the class room teaching other students.
Treseler, a junior at Stonehill, has been on the school’s Dean’s List at least twice, once during the spring of 2008 and again in the spring of 2010.
Stonehill’s Spokeswoman Kristen Magda in the statement, said Treseler was employed as a math tutor at the Angelo School through the America Counts Program—a federally funded work study program.
She said the college continues to work with Brockton Police in the matter.
According to court documents, the girl told police the alleged touching changed March 17 when hand touching went to hand and finger penetration.
The girl told police when she went home from school she immediately went to the bathroom and saw bleeding, court documents state.
She told her mother and her mother brought her to the emergency room and an investigation was begun.
The girl told police she had not told anyone about what maybe happening to her because she did not want to worry her mother and because the teacher allegedly told her “he would tell the police it was a lie if she ever said anything.”
According to court documents, in a videotaped interview with Brockton Police Treseler denied ever touching the girl inappropriately or touching any other child inappropriately.
Court documents state Treseler told police when asked why the girl would make such allegations he suggested, “the victim was angry with him for not having picked her for group.”
Treseler, according to court documents, told police he has had little to no interaction with the girl this school year and denied she had ever been at the back of the classroom.