Affidavit: Fresno High teacher admits to having sex with underaged student

Fresno High School teacher Darren Klassen admitted to having sex with an underage student in a secretly recorded telephone call with the victim that was monitored by police, according to court records released Friday.

Klassen, 46, was arrested Sept. 24 and booked on felony charges of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor and lascivious acts with a minor. He is free on $80,000 bail while the District Attorney’s Office decides whether to file charges in Fresno County Superior Court.

The newly released documents include affidavits by Fresno police detective David Wilkins in support of search warrants.

The affidavit says the 17-year-old girl told her parents on Sept. 24 that she had been having an affair with Klassen since she was 15 years old. The parents then notified police.

The girl told detectives that she met Klassen, an English teacher, in her freshman year and they began their affair by kissing each other. In her sophomore year, she said she started hanging out with Klassen more often and communicated via Facebook.

Shortly after she turned 16 in November 2013, she started having sex with Klassen, the affidavit says. She said the first encounter was in his classroom. She told detectives it was the first time she had sexual relations with anyone.

The affair then escalated to having sex with Klassen three to five days a week in the 2014-15 school year, the affidavit says. The sex happened in his classroom or inside a house, she told detectives.

During the relationship, the girl said she also sent hundreds of sexually provocative photographs of herself to Klassen via text messages.

At the direction of a detective, the girl called Klassen. The affidavit says Klassen answered the telephone and admitted in the recorded telephone call to having sex with the girl.

The affidavit allowed detectives to search Klassen’s classroom at Fresno High, his home and his car. Among the items seized was Klassen’s cellphone, school laptops, his computer tablets, and a thumb drive. Police also have seized the victim’s cellphone as evidence.

During the search, the affidavit says, detectives talked to a woman who turned over Klassen’s computer tablet and told police the victim’s emails were in it.

In all, there were three search warrants that allowed detectives to comb through Klassen’s social media accounts, including Facebook, Tumblr, Reddit and Dropbox.

Klassen’s first court date is Oct. 9, when a judge will inform him about whether charges have been filed. If no charges are filed, he will remain free on his bail.

Klassen could not be reached for comment Friday.

In a statement, Fresno Unified School District said Klassen has been placed on administrative leave.

Before teaching at Fresno High, Klassen was a teacher at Madera South High School for more than a decade. During that time, he was honored as an outstanding creative writing teacher at Fresno State’s 2004 Young Writers Conference.

Klassen is also a fixture in Fresno’s music scene, playing bass for Louder Than Waves, which performed in August at the Summerland 2015 music festival.

This story was originally published October 2, 2015 at 4:01 PM with the headline "Affidavit: Fresno High teacher admits to having sex with underaged student."