CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A former Ginn Academy teacher and coach who sexually assaulted two of his fellow teachers was sentenced Thursday to two years in prison.

Terrell Reddix said that he disagreed with a lot of evidence presented at his July trial but said that he took responsibility for his actions, which he blamed on a "locker-room mentality" inside the storied Cleveland school founded by Reddix's cousin, Ted Ginn Sr.

Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Judge Nancy Margaret Russo blasted the school district for its handling of the Reddix's case before handing down her sentence.

"I'm appalled that my tax money has gone to a school that has no safeguards in place for their employees," Russo said.

Cleveland Metropolitan School District spokeswoman Roseann Canfora said in an emailed statement after Reddix's conviction that the district was not aware of any records related to the 2013 incident and, once it learned of the 2016 allegations, took Reddix out of Ginn Academy, launched a sexual harassment investigation and suspended him without pay when a grand jury indicted him in May 2017.

Reddix worked his way up to the position of the school's athletic director but left to join his cousin and teach math at the Ginn Academy, the first and only all-male, public high school in the state, when it opened in 2007.

Reddix is also an elder at the Greater Works Church of God in Christ, where his uncle, the Rev. Archie Reddix Sr. serves as pastor.

Both teachers who accused Reddix of the sexual attacks gave remarkably similar stories.

He befriended them with jokes, but the banter eventually became more and more inappropriate before turning overtly sexual, both former teachers said. Both said Reddix made them uncomfortable but said they tried to brush off the comments.

The first teacher testified that in April of 2013, she and Reddix were in his classroom working together on a plan after school when Reddix came up from behind her and put his penis against her shoulder, she said.

She said Reddix mumbled something to her that sounded like "the easy way, or the hard way."

She jerked her hand up to block Reddix and spun out of the student desk, and shouted "what are you doing," she said. Reddix grabbed her by the wrist, dragged her to the back of the classroom and leaned against a chalkboard, still clutching her wrist and still with his penis out, she said.

Reddix attacked the second teacher over a period of three days in April 2016, she testified.

Reddix grabbed her arm in the school's hallway and tried to force her into his classroom as the two headed to morning session, she testified. Prosecutors played surveillance video from the school that showed the encounter in the empty hallway.

She said she braced herself against the doorway to prevent him from getting into his room, and he eventually relented and released her.

She said she stopped speaking to Reddix after that attack.

The next day, she said she was on her computer working on her resume to find a full-time teaching position when someone knocked on her door. She opened it to find Reddix, she said. She told him she was busy but he came into her room anyway, she said.

She said that as she worked on her computer, she felt Reddix get uncomfortably close, and then he said he was going to count backward from 30 as part of a "30-second dare," she said.

Then she heard Reddix unzip his pants, she said.

He pushed his body up against her back, and started petting her hair, she said. He kept counted down as he moved his hands down the side of her body, across the side of her breast, and down her side to her buttocks, she said.

When Reddix finished counting, he zipped up his pants and told her that "next time, it will be 90 seconds," she testified.

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