A former Indianapolis Public Schools teacher who was found to have encouraged students to fight and filmed it was sentenced to two years in prison on Thursday.
Julious Johnican was a first-year teacher at George Washington Carver School 87 in 2023. Soon after the start of the school year, a cell phone video was discovered that Johnican had filmed, in which he is heard encouraging another student to keep beating up a second-grade student with disabilities, who is sobbing.
The mother of one of the children involved in the case, Corrie Horan, said after the sentencing hearing that she was relieved to finally see the case settled.
“Just like a giant cloud of heavy stress has just been taken off of us,” Horan told WFYI.
After the video was made public, Marion County prosecutor Ryan Mears announced he was charging Johnican with neglect of a dependent, a Level 6 felony.
Johnican originally pleaded not guilty but then asked to change his plea to guilty in early August, with the hope of reducing his charge to a Class A misdemeanor.
During Thursday’s sentencing hearing, Judge Clark Rogers kept the Level 6 felony charge and ordered Johnican to serve two years' confinement with the Indiana Department of Corrections.
Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears said in a statement Thursday that schools are meant to be a safe place for children to learn.
“The defendant abused the trust placed in him as an educator and subjected vulnerable children to the unthinkable,” Mears said. “Today’s sentence holds him accountable for that betrayal of trust and the harm he caused.”
Horan and her lawyers, Catherine Michael and Tammy Meyer, said they believe justice was served on Thursday. They also said more accountability needs to happen at the school level and at the state education department.
“We keep seeing the teachers going away if they're successfully prosecuted, but we're not seeing the necessary changes within the school district that will stop this from happening and there certainly are ways to prevent it,” Michael said.
She believes more resources need to be dedicated to supporting teachers in the classroom overall, especially those serving kids with special needs. Michael said that new or young teachers need to be better equipped with training and support by the state or by school districts to ensure that cases like Johnican’s do not happen again.
“And frankly, we do have the money to do this. Supervision isn't that costly. Providing more training isn't that costly. We're just choosing not to do it,” Michael said.
IPS did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
Lawyers for Johnican told WFYI that he had no further comment.
The aftermath
The aftermath of the video, and the subsequent knowledge that neither IPS nor the Department of Child Services properly notified law enforcement of the abuse allegations, caused major backlash among IPS parents.
WFYI reported law enforcement agencies weren’t informed by the Department of Child Services nor IPS officials that Johnican had filmed and encouraged the students to fight. DCS and IPS did not tell the Indiana Department of Education about the issue either. WFYI confirmed this breakdown in communication goes against DCS policy.
Superintendent Johnson said at the time that the district “fell short” for not properly informing parents of the alleged abuse.
Contact Government Reporter Caroline Beck at cbeck@wfyi.org
