TYLER, Texas — A Tyler man accused of sexually assaulting students and sending inappropriate messages while he was a teacher in Harris County was arrested over the weekend.
Reginald Van Long, 27, was booked into the Smith County Jail Friday on bonds totaling $400,000. He is charged with improper relationship with a student, two counts of sexual assault of a child, online solicitation of a minor. The warrants are from Harris County, jail records show.
According to an arrest affidavit, Van Long worked at a charter school in Harris County. The document revealed that he sent inappropriate messages to children at the school through Instagram. One of the children said Van Long raped them for nearly a year.
In an interview with Van Long, he confessed to sending the sexual messages to several students who attended the school he had worked at. He also confessed to sexually assaulting the children mentioned in the documents, the affidavit read.
The affidavit said Van Long sent the children inappropriate images.
He also tried to get a student to sneak out of a school event so that he could sexually assault the child. In one message, Van Long said he wanted to kidnap the child "because he didn't want to wait five to six years" for them to turn 18. He confessed to sending the messages, including the one about kidnapping one of the children, according to the document.